The story behind the story
Thirty years ago in Calgary, Canada, then CBC Radio reporter Des Kilfoil and I ran a workshop to help improve industry news coverage, after an oil company failed as a result of gross misreporting: A geologist by training I’m not ignorant of investigation based on incomplete data (geology is art as much as science), but Des taught me to look for the story behind the story.
Investigative journalism was popularized by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein scooping what became Watergate, of which then Washington Post editor Katharine Graham masterfully documented the story behind the story in her Personal History. At a grander scale, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States uncovers many little-known yet equally telling details of back-stories that shaped the subcontinent from 1492 to 2001.
A previous Medium post Change comes from within I headlined with a superb video rendition of Flanders Fields by fellow late Canadian singer / songwriter Leonard Cohen. His career was apparently launched by a moody song Suzanne, about a mysterious namesake in his hometown Montreal. Rather than add to the swirl of controversy around either song or subject, let me introduce you to this recent and intriguing mini-documentary:
I think the bittersweet story of a brief encounter and separation then demise and atonement — hers but not his — has got to be one story behind the story of all time. The cinematographer’s light touch a well as Suzanne Verdal’s, while she pulls no punches, truly show what a complete story can look like.
This is in my mind the antithesis of the twitter generation of late, and the cure for the common sound-bite popularized for the previous TV generation. Let us not give in to facile and superficial media that insult our intelligence. Let us rather dig a little deeper, confront whatever discomfort that will bring up, and come out clean with useful and constructive discourse to help society move along.
“Opinions are free but facts are sacred” said Simon Rogers former Guardian Data guru now at Google Data by way of twitter. What he was saying is that fact-checking trumps all news manufacture (pun is intended for current media blitz). I found also via Medium a stellar case of proper data journalism by data scientist Patrick Martinchek, also former Mars rover Flight Director. What I Discovered About Trump and Clinton From Analyzing 4 Million Facebook Posts is a masterclass of cutting through the FUD and getting the story straight via… its back-story. Trump may be the twitter king — or at least his ghost-writers— but no fact-checking is required when you arm yourself with proper tools like Martinchek did! Not only that but he lets us all see his method, tools and even data via selene (correct data link here), openly.
As Dubya said, “you can run but you cannot hide”. He referred to Bin Laden his minions never found, but did he know that would apply to his purported successor 15 years later? Opinions can run wild and wreak havoc with stock markets or elections, for example, but one can neither hide the data one used, nor can one hide behind it. And while correlation is not causation, lying about data only help mis-correlation.
So where do we go now? Do we throw up our arms and give up on current affairs that never seem to go our way? Do we compromise our integrity just to get along &/or get things moving again? No! It’s the very information that we have at our fingertips like never before that will help us.
Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8:34)
