‘Need to know’ a double-edged sword

I’m inquisitive by nature.

No. Strike that.

Inquisitive doesn’t begin to describe me. I must know everything. About everything. I hate being in the dark. I guess that’s what makes my career choice so very obvious. I think “must know everything” is at the top of most journalists characteristics.

It’s not only journalists that have a need to know everything, of course. I’d say that society as a whole — or at least a very large portion of it — falls into the same category. Which is why the media exists, I suppose. If it were only journalists who needed to know everything, who would pay our paychecks?

Here we are more than a month removed from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the 24-hour news channels are still on top of it — 24 hours a day. The fact that an airplane went missing and we can’t explain it is killing us. I’ll admit, I’m befuddled by its disappearance and I continue to watch the “Breaking News” alerts, thinking that eventually one of them is actually going to be breaking news, as opposed to what we’ve been getting, which is not breaking news.

In the grand scheme of things, the Malaysian airplane disappearance is fairly recent. We could go back a lot farther for things that we’re still trying to get to the bottom of. What really happened at Waco? Who killed JFK? Where was Barack Obama born? OK, I jest on that last one. But you get the gist.

The fact that there are facts that we’re not privy to or that we can’t piece together to make a clear picture of bothers us. And yet, when you really step back and think about it, does it matter that much? Waco, JFK, and Obama becoming president are all history. No amount of information is going to change the facts that we know. And no black box is going to bring back the passengers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It’s a sad reality that information doesn’t change the facts.

On another topic entirely, I read a story on the Associated Press the other day about a man serving life in jail for a crime he committed when he was 13. He’s up for parole — again — after being denied parole in 2012.

Obviously the brutal murder he committed in 1994 — the killing of a four-year-old — can never be undone. And there’s no real way to atone for the death of another, but I think 20 years in prison for a crime that was committed as a teenager is enough — no matter how heinous the crime.

I know that I’m not the same person as I was in 1994. I can’t imagine that Eric Smith, the man who, as a boy murdered Derrick Robie, is either. In other words, the person in prison right now isn’t even the same person that committed the crime.

Is he a better person or a worse person? Sadly, I think the odds are the prison has made him worse for the wear over the last 20 years, but that’s another problem to solve on another day.

Scott Leffler is thankful for Twitter, where he can learn everything about everything — even if the things he learns aren’t true. You can follow him there @scottleffler and hope that the things he says are true.

Scoops turn ugly when they're wrong

A friend of mine texted me on Wednesday, frustrated by the fact that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address had overrun her Twitter feed. More to the point, she was frustrated by all the journalist types trying to beat all the other journalist types to the punch with specific points of his address.

“I’ve noticed the reporters that tweet excessively seem to have less of a filter, report more emotionally than you see on TV, and sometimes in an effort to beat others to a scoop, are blasting erroneous info to the world,” she said to me. “This rant was brought to you by my exasperation over receiving too many (imho) tweets about the governor’s address today.”

I told her that Twitter has complicated the news industry. The immediacy of the news seems to be more important these days than the accuracy of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I want my news now, too. I use the Internet, and specifically Twitter, to keep up on breaking news items all the time. I only watched two Buffalo Bills game all season long. The others I “watched” via Twitter, checking in occasionally to see how the team was doing.

“I’m big on being right. But as a reporter, there is also a big focus on being first,” I told her. And then it hit me. Getting a scoop is still a really big deal. In the days before Twitter and Facebook and 24/7 websites, you either beat your competition in the next day’s print or you didn’t. Now us journalist types have to try to beat everyone online. Twitter. Facebook. Whatever.

And when you’re first — speaking as a journalist type here — there’s an incredible, almost undefinable sense of pride. I tried long and hard to think of a real-life comparison to share with non-journalist types. Failing miserably, I turned to the Internet to ask my Facebook friends, many of whom are journalist types themselves.

Below are some of what they consider to be comparable real-life situations:

• Walking down the street, minding your own business, and finding a $50 bill on the ground.
• Maybe a sports (pro or not) comparison: like being the teammate who makes the winning play in the championship game.
• Christmas morning when you open that gift you REALLY wanted.
• Perhaps landing a new job ... or a first kiss.
• Getting a date with a girl that you thought wouldn’t give you the time of day.

As you can see, those are pretty big deals. Scoops are the capital of journalism. They make our world go ‘round.

But if the scoop is wrong, what we’ve got is a counterfeit $50; making the winning play and then having it called back because of a foul; opening the gift you wanted and immediately dropping it, fracturing it into 1,000 pieces; landing the new job but failing the drug test … or kissing the girl and finding out she wasn’t a girl; getting a date with the girl, and getting stood up.

To exacerbate matters, incorrect scoops lead the public to mistrust journalist types generally. And then they assume you spent your whole life spending counterfeits and kissing transvestites.

So to my journalist friends who put speed ahead of accuracy: Stop it. You’re making us all look bad.

Scott Leffler is a journalist type who has never spent a counterfeit $50 bill or kissed a transvestite — to the best of his knowledge. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler and he’ll be sure to tell you immediately if he ever does.

Whatever happened to just journalism?

I tend to tell people I’m a writer — as opposed to calling myself a journalist. There are a few reasons for this but it primarily comes from me not viewing myself in any grandiose manner that would qualify me as a journalist. I just write things I think in this column and write things I know in the stories I occasionally write.

The other day I read a column by Jeff Jarvis — most recognizable, I’d imagine as a TV critic for TV guide — in which he states that all journalism is advocacy.

“The choices we make about what to cover and how we cover it and what the public needs to know are acts of advocacy on the public’s behalf,” Jarvis said.

I tend to agree to a degree but I think that Jarvis over-simplified matters. And I’d also state that calling something “advocacy” leads me to believe that the writer (or editor or producer or whatever) had a bias going into the story. To me the word “advocacy” is tainted from the beginning.

I suppose you could say that members of the media — I also refer to myself in this way from time to time — are supposed to be advocating for the truth. I also imagine that many do.

George Orwell, the author of “1984” and “Animal Farm” said that “Journalism is printing what others don't want printed. Everything else is public relations.”

He’s got a good point, too. As cynical as he was, he must have considered himself a journalist at some point in his life. But he was most certainly an advocate for the way he thought things should be.

I think a lot of the “news” people on television (and radio) are not journalists at all. They’re not even really news people. They’re talking heads. Or worse, they’re hacks pushing a political point of view under the guise of being journalists.

What’s wrong with “just the facts ma’am?” Why must the people in charge of disseminating information choose to be so selective with what they report? What they dig up? And what they hide?

Obviously there is a finite amount of space in a newspaper or time in a TV or radio broadcast, so there are going to be things left on the proverbial cutting room floor. However, I fear that too much of what’s cut is what should run. And too much of what runs should never have been published.

That is why this field of mine — media or journalism or whatever you want to call is — was told last year that only 40 percent of people trust us a great deal or a fair amount while 60 percent of people don’t trust us at all.

Maybe we should stop advocating and start reporting.

And I’ll just keep writing.

Scott Leffler has worked in the local media for over a dozen years. He has a degree in journalism. And another in Political Science. But in the end he’s just a writer with two beautiful daughters. Follow his tweets @scottleffler.