The Unmentioned

I became a silent witness to a little bit of newsroom drama when I arrived at Channel 4 for work last night.

My editors were in the middle of gathering information for a breaking news story, and apparently they were having trouble getting confirmation of one very important fact that was central to the story. Every source they called was unable or unwilling to confirm this particular fact, yet one of our affiliate organizations had somehow received confirmation from a source who refused to do the same for us.

There were two likely possibilities: either the source had never actually confirmed anything and the affiliate had misinterpreted the source's statement, or the source had secretly divulged the information to the affiliate because of a close relationship with one of its reporters.

(I'm going to continue as if both the source and the reporter were male, for simplicity's sake.)

Much to our surprise, the source called us back, and when asked about his statement to the affiliate he denied giving them any special treatment. One of the editors called the reporter who claimed to have received confirmation from this source, and the reporter became angry because he was afraid he would lose the source as a contact after we had revealed that he had passed the secret along to us.

Thus, in the end, our relationship with a valuable contact at the affiliate--the reporter--was strained.

Thankfully, we eventually received confirmation of the fact from a different source and we were able to get the story on the air in time. But I was surprised at the intricacy of the relationships between reporters, editors, and sources. Everyone has contacts, and when breaking news hits, it's the people who have good working relationships with the right sources that get the story. Of course, in a business like the news where the tension always seems to be running high thanks to the pressure of deadlines, it's easy for friends to become rivals in a sometimes bitter competition for the truth.

When I first started working at Channel 4, one of the photographers told me that being a journalist can seriously hurt your relationships with others. Not just friends who happen to be sources, but family, too. He said you're always trying to find a balance between who you are when you're reporting and who you are when you're not, that sometimes you'll have to make tough choices and sacrifices one way or the other--for your career, or for your personal life. I'm beginning to understand what he meant by that.