Journalism and Popular History
I’m not here to rag on journalists. In college, I majored in journalism before adding history as my second major, and I was very serious about being a career journalist for most of high school into my sophomore year of college. However, I became disillusioned by certain realities within the journalistic profession, and realized that I simply did not have the right personality to enjoy and be successful as a journalist. Though I was no longer interested in journalism as a career, I kept it as a major because I valued the writing skills.
Despite my problems with journalism as a profession, I respect journalists very much; they do an invaluable job, and they are very hard working, and often undervalued professionals. However, I think that some of their number need to stop believing that a. just because they are good at using research to write stories about contemporary issues, they are qualified to write history, and that b. the journalistic process can be applied to the writing of history. They can’t, and it can’t; the methodologies, though similar, are not compatible.
When journalists gather facts, they gather primarily in the form of interviews, and the examination of records and documents. That may sound similar to the usage of oral histories and archival documents by historians, but in actuality these fact gathering methods are worlds apart.
When journalists use documents and records, they use contemporary documents easily analyzed because the analysis of these documents does not require knowledge of a different context. However, when historians use documents and records, they understand that, because these records were created within a separate context, they cannot be taken at face value, and can only be analyzed in terms of the larger context in which they were created.
When journalists conduct interviews, anything said on the record by a source may be used in a story, even if that source is anonymous (in some cases), and even if the quotes being used are vague and ambiguous. That is unacceptable in historical writing. All facts used must be verifiable, which is why, when historians use interviews as primary sources, they use oral histories obtained by public historians trained in proper oral history methodology. Nothing can be vague, and nothing can be left to chance.
There is also the issue of sensationalism. Surely you’ve seen popular historical works with titles like “The Secret Life of Blah: Stunning Previously Unknown Information about the Inner World of XYZ.” Yeah it’s an attention grabbing title, and it probably contains interesting and accurate information. The problem lies in the deception inherent in the title: that the information contained about Blah is new*. In reality, those facts were never secret, or unknown.
They existed within an archive whose workers were fully aware of their existence, and if they existed with an archive and were as important and hard hitting as the journalist believes, the chances are excellent that historians specializing in whatever field those facts correspond to have studied them, or at least made mention of them in an academic journal. It is great that the journalist in question wanted to use their writing skills to share what I am sure is fascinating information with a general audience, but the insinuation that they discovered those facts is arrogant, obnoxious, and insulting to the academic historian who did the research and wrote the initial text, and the archival workers who worked hard to get the collection into their repository, and make it accessible to researchers.
I do know that there are problems with how history is written. Academics, regardless of discipline, do not often write in an accessible manner, or, a manner that most people are willing to motivate themselves into wading through while journalists, on the other hand, do; they have to. I think that I am able to write about history in an accessible manner for this blog because I studied journalism and learned how to write for general audiences. I doubt any history departments would be keen on the idea, but I think it would be highly beneficial to students of history—especially on the graduate level—if they were required to take a journalism course or two.
Conversely, I think a journalist who wants to write about history needs to take a course on basic historical methodology, or at least read a book. I think journalism programs should consider cross-listing with history courses geared towards teaching students how to write history. Wanting to get the word out there about parts of history unknown to general audiences is great, but if it’s going to be done in a professional manner, it needs to be done right.
I apologize if this post comes across as pretentious or overly “establishment.” I just feel very strongly that history is too important to be left in the hands of those who lack an understanding of how it works. While I take a broad, liberal, and often interdisciplinary view of the historical discipline and primary sources, I do not take a broad view of how history should be written.
This post is dedicated to my mother, with whom I fight about journalists who write history. I told you I’d write a post about it.
*I understand that these hyperbolic titles are not always used with the intent discussed in this post and are often necessary for marketing purposes.
