IRELAND
Irish Times
Una Mullaly
Mon, Feb 3, 2014
I was working late the other night, accompanied by a friend, waiting around to grab some quotes from people, when he asked, “do you ever just make things up?” No, I said, never. Making up what would seem like an unimportant anonymous quote would be the same as making up something a minister told you, which would be the same as giving a false opinion in a film review, or pretending you had a source for something when it was just rumour. It’s all the same. It’s the principle. You just don’t want to go there.
While we were talking about this, I recalled one of the first lecturers the journalist Eddie Holt gave my class in DCU. He was talking about truth. If you lie or are dishonest in journalism, he said, that lie or that remark that wasn’t fully right, or that opinion you feigned, will run away from you, it’ll take on a life of its own and go all sorts of places and possibly turn into something unrecognisable. Inevitably it will come back to bite you in the ass.
Decision time
The truth, on the other hand, is steadfast. You can control it. When you put it out into the world, it comes to heel. Aged 18, and listening to Holt, it was decision time. Are you going to be the kind of journalist who is led by the truth, or the “kinda” truth? If you want to live with yourself, there’s no contest.
Every journalist knows the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night thinking, “I did get their name right, Didn’t I?” or “it was a hundred grand and not a million, wasn’t it?” You’re dealing with quotes and truths and figures and facts and feelings so much that getting everything right can create a low level of anxiety. Honest mistakes can happen, naturally, but it’s a whole different scenario if you’re purposefully misrepresenting something.
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