Village Squire, 1978-07, Page 42P.S.
The era of the journalist as god seems to
be with us.
There was a time only five or 10 years
ago when journalists were mere reporters,
sworn to do the best job they could in
simply relaying the facts from the source to
the reader. That was the code a mere
decade ago when 1 was taking training. We
were told over and over again that there
was a place for opinion in journalism but
that place was on the editorial page or in a
signed column.
That was before the modern trend
started. Now one seldom, it seems gets the
news but someone's opinion otthe news.
The situation is the worst in radio where
the "personalized" news report dominates
the airwaves, particularly in the larger
cities where stations vie for listeners. 1.
remember a couple of years ago staying in
a Toronto Hotel and turning on the radio at
8 a.m. to try to hear the news. I flipped
from one station to another all over the dial
just trying to get the facts ma'am, nothing
but the facts but all I could get was an
endless string of people giving the news
and making snide comments.
The thing that's been getting my goat
most lately has been the witty putdown
that has sprung up from the news as
commentary movement. One of the better
putdowns I can recall reading in the past
couple of years came from a theatre critic
who had been constantly critical of a
particular theatre. Finally he went to see a
show, a farce, at the theatre and actually
liked it. Still he managed to get in his barb
by saying that with farce it was hard to
know if the mistakes were planned as part
of the gags or if they were really mistakes.
Perhaps, he suggested, the theatre should
do farce all the time so that its usual goofs
could be laughed off as just being part of
the act.
Many people likely had a few chuckles
out of that one even as they said to
themselves "ooh that was a mean one."
Indeed it was funny but not to the people
who were the brunt of the joke.
Now I've got nothing against people
taking a shot at someone if the target really
deserves the barb. But I think the trend is
getting pretty carried away these days.
Read a magazine like Macleans and every
writer in the book seems to be wielding a
poison pen. Listen to radio commentaries
and the glib put down is ever handy. Read
columnists in newspapers and they seem to
gleefully trot out every smart-alecky jibe
they can come up with.
My experience is that about three-quart-
ers of all journalists are frustrated
novelists, poets or playwrights. They all
dream about someday taking up "serious"
writing but lack either the skill or the
courage to try it. They'll defend their
profession loud and long but underneath it
all they have an inferiority complex
PG. 40. VILLAGE SQUIRE/JULY 1978.
because they feel that the creative writers
are the "real" writers.
Their drive for more creativity has been
what has shown up in recent years in the
opinionated commentaries and the smart
put downs. After all, thinking up witty
ways to put people down is pretty heady
stuff. We all get a great kick out of
watching one character in a play or movie
or on television put the knife to another
character. "Gee, I wish I'd said that" we
say to ourselves and remember a situation
where we've been put down or embarassed
and wished we'd come up with a zingy one
liner that would have put the guy in his
place but good.
So when he sits down at his typewriter
the journalist has a chance to get all the
frustration out in witty, cutting, catty
remarks. It feels very creative compared to
the fairly dull, mechanical work of
reporting on what was said and writing
only the facts. Out come all the witty things
the would-be creative writer can create.
The problem is that the truth somehow
gets lost in the urge to be witty. Wit used
properly it can lose all true perspective.
The writer can get so carried away with wit
as to forget the real point of the article, to
convey information, and simply reduce the
article to a witty diatribe. Such is often the
case of writers like John Robertson in
Maclean's, particularly when he used to
spend endless hours finding ways to make
the Montreal Expos look ridiculous, as if
the Expos didn't at that time look
ridiculous enough all by themselves. Today
Robertson has gone on to fry other fish,
quipping and whipping everything that
moves.
Sports and entertainment are the two
areas that are most infested with the fast
putdown. It seems that every young writer
who goes out to review a play of a movie
has to come up with a few zingers to show
that he knows how to write, even if he may
not feel too secure about his knowledge of
plays or movies. When in doubt, ridicule
seems to be the standard.
We're all guilty of that kind of
smart -aleck remark in our everyday life of
course. Listen to any conversation at a
party and you're likely to hear a succession
of cutting remarks, usually about someone
who's not there. The difference with
writers is that they're doing it for an
audience of thousands, perhaps millions.
They also put it down in writing for that the
brunt of the joke also gets a chance to read
it and to suffer. That's the thing that
people forget when they're being so witty
and creative: that while 99 per cent of the
readership may laugh their heads off, but
that other percent, the victims, don't think
it's- so great. If the victim deserves the
shot, that's one thing. But if the shot is
taken just because the writer wants to
impress everyone with how clever he is,
then that's not so good.
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