Broad Strokes or Populist Reporting?
While I have met a good number of people who are tremendously well versed on a variety of subjects, I cannot say I’ve yet had the pleasure of meeting one able to demonstrate an understanding (and do keep in mind the difference between understanding something and knowing bland facts about it) everything. It is a fact I accept as part of the natural order of things that some know more about one thing than others and, as such, must sacrifice the small details of an phenomenon so keep the larger picture within focus; delving into atomic spin orbitals isn’t really necessary when explaining how a microwave works. It becomes expected that experts know enough about something to boggle our minds with details (after all, that’s why they’re experts) and, for the sake of not loosing an audience, leaves out details which would be either lost or distracting to the lay person. But at what point does this simplification become oversimplification? More disturbing, how far will we let someone broad stroke an issue before it’s evident that they’re skipping important parts, parts that shouldn’t be skipped, for a better selling story?
These thoughts came to mind during an interview I caught on Berkeley’s KPFA Flashpoints program. They broadcast an interview with journalist Robert Fisk earlier this evening (Jan 29th) in which Fisk, as befitting his great familiarity with the Middle East went into good detail on some of the more shadowy details of the current US led occupation of Iraq (beyond my own knowledge without question). There was a bit more. Something in his voice that was familiar to me through the time I’ve spent living overseas as an expat. Something in the same tone as the sentence I just wrote. There’s a tone of “I know more than you possibly can because I’ve been there.”
Is there credit to this notion? Some, surely. There’s something about living in a place that goes beyond merely studying it. It goes back to the distinction between knowing a place in the academic sense and understanding it in a way that’s somehow more. But there’s a danger to this. In the same way one with a financial stake in, say, the automotive industry may not be the most objective reporting on failing auto safety, one with an emotional stake in a country or region may, consciously or not, tend to overlook it’s shortcomings in a way that creates the same one-sided world view he would criticize from someone who’s never been there.
It’s a balancing act, you see, to allow yourself to experience enough of a place to understand it better without letting yourself get carried away with the prevailing ideas of a place.
While embedded journalists and experts are without a doubt invaluable to our understanding of the world, we should all keep in mind that thin line between reporting and supporting and how easy it can be to drift over.