A matter of context

Cross-posted to Random Fate.

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Upon becoming a stepdad, I’ve been introduced into the wonderful world of middle-school homework. One of the prevalent tasks (appearing in more than one class in more than one grade) is a “current event” summary. The student is to find a news article related to the class (this year we have two, one for Social Studies and one for Science) from a reliable source, primarily a newspaper or one of the major media websites, read the article, and write a summary that includes a summary, any points being pushed in the article, and the student’s reaction to the content. In helping with this assignment, I’ve noticed two changes in how news articles are written that I find very disturbing.

First, it seems that the “inverted pyramid” that I was taught to use when I was writing for my high school newspaper has been abandoned. Instead of starting with the most essential elements of the story in broad strokes with progressively more details as the article continues, a narrative style seems to be taking hold. The inverted pyramid (or painting style as I liked to think of it, where an outline sketch is the starting point, then broad background colors are added, then the final shading and details are painted) allowed the hurried reader to get the gist of a story quickly and if the story merited further interest, all one had to do was keep reading. Now, it is difficult to extract the news from most stories until halfway or more through the article, and even then some of the key points may not be written about until near the end.

The more troubling change I find is related to the loss of the inverted pyramid; it is the lack of context provided, especially for complex topics. To take one non-political example from the recent news, the so-called “comeback performance” by Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards was reported cruelly focusing on her weight and her seeming lost on stage, completely lacking in the context of how she is a mother twice over and has had what can best be described as a turbulent personal life in the past year. While I am not advocating sympathy for the barely-clad Ms. Spears, understanding that she was trying to reclaim her status in the music industry as a mover and player and contrasting that attempt with the result makes her and her story a tragedy rather than an object of ridicule and fun that is obviously cruel when the context is considered.

Regarding a topic of significantly more importance to the future, few articles I saw about the widely discussed “Petraeus Report” noted that General Petraeus had previously made a progress report during the period where he was responsible for training of Iraqi security forces. This earlier report was very optimistic regarding the progress being made by the same security forces that are now said to be completely unreliable and better to be disbanded than kept. Instead, the testimony before Congress has been reported as part of a tale of Democrats versus President Bush instead of with the context of the previous history of the commands of this general and the results he claimed to achieve versus what has subsequently come to light. Placing the report as a set-piece in a narrative of political conflict forces the reader to view it through a partisan lens rather than accepting or rejecting the conclusions reported based upon the history of accuracy of those drawing the conclusions.

Is it any wonder with this type of forced narrative that political discourse has descended into accusations of “treason” and “warmongering” instead of discussions and yes, arguments, that still accept the good intentions of all parties involved?