Rethinking record creation
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"At this juncture, speculation is unhelpful, and it can be downright dangerous," Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said at a press conference Monday.
She was pleading for people to "turn down the temperature" of their rhetoric one day after a local Iraq war veteran drove his American flag-bedecked truck into a church in a suburb of Flint, MI. where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were worshipping. The man began shooting and likely set the church on fire, actions that killed four people. The suspect was also shot and killed.
Whitmer was speaking to a room full of reporters in a closed press conference but her remarks were clearly aiming beyond them. Speculation has become a commodity. Its creation, publication, and distribution by opportunists, regular people and media professionals is emotionally, economically, and politically incentivized. It can feel dangerous.
I grew up not far from where this violence happened and where its tragedy will continue to unfold. I watched the press conference and am reading coverage because I feel connected somehow. I am not. I don't need answers or sense-making like the people in that community. Still, it's not voyeurism, but more like a kind of vigil by way of information acquisition. It is a lonely, sad, and modern ritual so many of us have been keeping through wars and acts of violence.
I had spent the last several days before this tragedy thinking about and sketching out ideas related to one of the most basic and old-fashioned functions of the news, the creation of a public record. I was struggling with whether or not record creation is still essential when it can be done so easily by people who are not reporters. Whitmer's plea made this tension so clear.
Anybody with reliable access to the internet can make their witness of almost anything public, from a family meal to a public meeting to a national tragedy. There is so much record of our modern times we are overwhelmed. Everyone knows this. It is why Whitmer spoke past the reporters in the room, whom she does not depend on to mediate her relationship with the public.
This ubiquity is one of the things making news sources so marginal to most people's information diets. Before the officials left the room, Brian Lipe, the local police chief, said this would be the last press conference. "If there's any other pertinent information, we will let you all know," he said. "We'll post it on our social media account. The Grand Blanc Township police department Facebook page."
Journalistic record creation does still matter, I think. It remains an essential function especially because officials can and do create their own versions of the truth, that can reach the public just as easily.
The question is when. When should reporters use their scarce resources to verify the facts? When should we turn over this record creation to the community itself, whether that means documenting what happened at a public meeting or something else? And when does the creation of an accurate record require more journalistic time, sources, perspectives, and verification?
There is clarity, perhaps, in trying to view even record creation through the lens of providing a service.
In an ideal world, which we are far from now, local record creation would be largely community-driven.
It would require a level of trust most newsrooms don't currently enjoy, but let's imagine. Local news sources in particular could have an explicit, articulated agreement with their audiences about the type of events that deserve a journalistic record. Would it be every local birth and death, or prep sports score, or public meeting, or development project approved? Would it be when somebody contacts the newsroom to ask for an event to be verified or explained?
In this hypothetical the newsroom would have its own ideas about newsworthiness and would act on these, but they would be transparent about what these are, and they would tell their audience. A shared understanding between the audience and the news source of what events deserve a record could make this basic function more useful, meaningful and perhaps more trustworthy. (If there are already examples of this kind of relationship you know of, please share them with me so I can learn more.)
The violence in Grand Blanc is not being covered by local outlets alone. Every major national outlet is covering it, too. Reporters are being flown in from across the country or, unfortunately, still sitting at their desks in those far-flung places and working the phones. Between the local and national versions of the record, the local is better sourced and more complete. There is a familiar tension here too. As people we often want the events we see as important to be seen as important on a larger scale, but those national records often don't feel, or aren't, true reflections.
There do not seem to be many facts that can be verified right now, so the coverage on national platforms is displayed prominently, but it's shallow. CNN's coverage is outdated and contains wrong information. The New York Times’ headline was confusing. This subpar record creation is perhaps because analysis or sense-making, something a national news organization is well positioned to do, is not yet possible.
Journalistic record creation remains essential. Its should be driven by service and ground rules determined with the audience. These records have a value beyond what can be created by officials or witnesses alone. They are verified, they are more complete, they are more reflective of shared reality. But a record is the most basic form of journalism. When an event is difficult to understand, process, and accept, as the violence in Grand Blanc is, many of us want and need more than a record.
Until next week. Take care of yourself and somebody else.
What am I reading?
I just learned of Mattia Peretti and Jeremy Gilbert's project at Northwestern University's Knight Lab to interrogate some of the same questions about news we're working through here.
They're taking a very open approach, complete with a Google Doc you can mark up. We are approaching the work differently (they might be more open to legacy ideas/nicer), but these are still very complementary efforts.
