"Be skeptical of everything. Ask skeptical quetions." Those two sentences reverberated in my head yesterday during Steve Suo's guest lecture in one of my journalism classes. Suo was the lead investigative reporter on The Oregonian's story about "The Unnecessary Epidemic," a multi-day series that covered the meth crisis affecting our nation.
Suo gave a presentation about the computer-assisted-reporting techniques he used to uncover a lot of the startling statistics and assertions made in the series. One of the most important: meth production is a highly organized endeavor and more than 80% of meth in this country comes from Mexican drug cartels who have super labs in the fields of Calif. Suo showed us, using simplified line graphs, how he kept finding the same type of line graph for disparate statistics. In other words, the graph for meth purity, meth rehab patients, arrests, fraud, forgery and other property crimes followed the exact same flow on their charts, mirroring the same highs and lows, which also coordinated with several acts on the federal government's part.
Suo gave a striking explanation for why meth suddenly became such a huge problem in the US and even more so, a solution to fix it.
But that's where class ended. We didn't get an opportunity as much to ask questions about the suggestions Suo made throughout the story about what the government could be doing to fix the meth epidemic. I was curious what he thought about making assertions about what could be done. I can't think of other examples in the media, at least none in a mainstream "objective" newspaper, where the journalist went beyond making a point/exposing the more complicated backstory, to actually saying what could/should be done about it.
He mentioned that in the years since he began covering this enormous story, some legislation has been enacted and government officials are starting to do something about it as a direct result of The Oregonian's coverage. Every reporter's dream. But I have to wonder if the government started doing something about it because of the direct "the government could be doing something about it"/"the drug companies have stopped the government's efforts in the past" statements that Suo made throughout the story, or if the statistics and other information convinced the politicians.
I'm not saying I'm against making assertions about could and should, but what I'm saying is, at what point to we become activists as journalists in our writing? Obviously a story about the enormous meth problem is fairly black and white about what type of assertions/suggestions you're going to make about what could be done: cut off the supply, make it harder to get the ingredients, etc. But in a story more grey, say about acquaintance rape, trying to make assertions based on statistics could be extremely misleading given the growing phenomenon of falsely accusing someone after waking up and regretting a drunken night of sex.
I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to get at, other than I was a bit surprised to see so many could (which often means should) statements throughout the first-day coverage. It made the story far more biting and interesting, but it also sounded like the story had a voice, a narrator, whose beliefs were motivating the writing.
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