1. CBC Radio, B.C. Almanac, November, 2004, Interview with Mark Forsythe, "Recovering Chinese Canadian History," Prof. Yu and UBC Emeritus Prof. Edgar Wickberg discuss the founding of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of B.C. and a pair of Family History workshops that the CCHS is holding to help recover the lost histories of the Chinese in Canada. They talk about the often ignored or erased history of Chinese Canadians, and the important need to revise our European-centred version of Canadian history.
2. CBC Radio, Early Edition, 2005, Interview with Stephen Quinn, "Chinese Canadian Head Tax," Prof. Yu appears on CBC Radio's Early Edition to explain the Head Tax on the morning of the debut of the documentary "In the Shadow of Gold Mountain" on CBC Newsworld later that day. Educational efforts such as this interview were part of a three decade long campaign aimed at raising public awareness of the Head Tax and to argue for the need for redress.
3. CBC Radio, On the Coast, May 2006, Interview with Priya Ramu, "Do We Need Asian Heritage Month/Explorasian?" Prof. Yu takes part in a conversation about whether we still need a special month set aside to celebrate and acknowledge the place of Asian Canadian arts and culture. Yu makes the argument that we live in such a unique city, with almost half the population of Asian heritage, that we need new models for understanding who we are and the engagements that have shaped our history and future. One month out of the year is a token and marginalizing symbol rather than a serious effort to rethink what we are.
4. CBC Radio, Early Edition, May, 2006,Interview with Rick Cluff, "Digitization of Chinese Head Tax Registers," Prof. Yu appears on CBC Radio's Early Edition to talk about the project that he and Prof. Peter Ward are undertaking at UBC to create a digital database of the complete records of the 96,000 Chinese migrants to Canada between 1885 and 1923 who registered for the Head Tax. Yu explains how the completed database will make it easier for descendants and researchers to search for individuals in the register.
5. CBC Television News, May 2006, "Searching for Chinese Head Tax Payers," On the CBC Vancouver local evening news, Prof. Yu explains how the apology and redress program for the Head Tax has sparked a rush to search for ancestors who had paid the Head Tax. Yu shows on the Vancouver Public Library's microfilm collection how he found his own grandfather's records, and the difficulties of using the chronologically-ordered microfilm records.
6. BBC Radio International, June 2006, "Apology for Chinese Canadian Head Tax," Prof. Yu explains to an audience on BBC International what the Head Tax was, its effects on family life, and why an apology at this time is an important symbol of recognition and acknowledgment.
7. CBC Radio Early Edition, February 2007, "Year of the Pig," Prof. Yu talks to Rick Cluff over dim sum at Floata Restaurant in Chinatown about the significance of 2007 for understanding the long history of Chinese in the history of British Columbia. Tying Chinese migrants to other Asians and to First Nation peoples, he counters the idea that British Columbia's history is primarily about European settlement.
8. CBC Radio Early Edition, March 2007, "The 100th Anniversary of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots," Prof. Yu explains the significance of 2007 as the anniversary of riots that changed the history of B.C., shifting the society from a world where Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian migrants were no longer welcome. Yu also discusses the year-long series of events in 2007 that will mark important anniversaries of change that celebrate those who have fought to change Canadian society for the better.
9. Fairchild TV Nighly News, July 1, 2007, "10th Anniversary of the Hong Kong Handover," Prof. Yu and other panelists at a forum held at UBC explain the significance for Vancouver of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control. Other panelists include Baldwin Wong, City Planner; Charlie Smith, editor of The Georgia Straight: Winnie Cheung, of UBC International Community Engagement; Jan Walls of SFU; Victor Ho, editor of Sing Tao Daily; Andrew Yang of CBC Radio; and Diana Lary of the Center for Chinese Research.
10. Global National TV News, July 1, 2007, "The Impact of the 1997 Hong Kong Reversion on Vancouver and Canada," Prof. Yu talks to Sophia Lui about the impact that the Hong Kong Handover had on making Vancouver a truly global city and changing its face. The report also features former UBC INSTRCC student Joyce Tang talking about her own family's history and how her presence in Vancouver is the result of 1997.
11. CTV Evening News, and 12. Global National TV News, October 2007,, "Does Bruce Allen Represent Vancouver?" Prof. Yu speaks as Co-Chair of the Anniversaries of Change Steering Committee, a broad-based coalition of educational institutions, community organizations, arts and cultural organizations, and labour unions that came together to mark the 100th Anniversary of the 1907 Riots and the historical changes that were necessary to overcome the racial divisions created a century ago. The coalition used the example of a Bruce Allen scree on CKNW against South Asian immigrants to make the point that his opinion was antiquated and no longer represented the global Vancouver that the 2010 Olympic Committee purported to represent.
13. CBC Radio, Sounds Like Canada, "Tim Horton Commercial and Chinese Canadian Hockey," Prof. Yu speaks with Stephen Quinn and actor Russell Jung, who played a hockey dad in a famous Tim Horton's commercial about the place of hockey in the lives of a three generations of a Chinese Canadian family. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Larry Kwong's debut in the NHL, Yu talks about the role of sports in integrating immigrants into Canadian society, and the curious and continuing absence of Chinese Canadian players in the NHL.
14. Channel M, Cantonese language Nightly News, August, 2008, "The Chinese in the History of B.C.," Prof. Yu is interviewed about the role of Chinese Canadians in B.C. history as part of an in-depth program examining the engagements between Chinese and First Nations peoples throughout the Fraser Valley. Providing a counterpoint to celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of B.C. that leave out Native and other non-white voices, the story provides an alternate approach to histories erased by colonialism. Detailing a long ignored history, the archeological evidence for extensive contact remains, as well as within the oral history memories of First Nations peoples. An estimated 30% of Sto:lo peoples, for instance, trace some Chinese ancestry dating from the early engagements between Chinese and aboriginal communities.
Missing:
1. Fairchild TV, Mandarin Evening News, October, 2006, "The Head Tax Apology," Prof. Yu explains the significance of the Head Tax and the Federal Government's apology, using the example of his own family to illustrate the long term legacies of the discriminatory legislation on Chinese Canadian families. He also explains why understanding this history is important even for recently arrived Chinese immigrants who believe they no longer face racial discrimination.
2. CBC Canada French TV, Sept. 8, 2007, "The 1907 Riots and Vancouver Today," Prof. Yu is interviewed for a French language broadcast on the history of Pacific Canada and the present day status of Asians in Canada.
3. CBC Radio International, Sept. 8, 2007, "The State of Race in Canada," Prof. Yu talks to Carmen Rodgriguez about the state of race and racism in Canada, pointing out that although Canada's multiculturalism policy is touted as the most progressive in the world, issues of economic racism, and continuing legacies of colonialism haunt Canada. In particular, the treatment of First Nations peoples and an overwhelmingly Asian migrant economic underclass performing services at bare survival wages remain largely invisible to most Canadians.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Working with the Media
I've been asked today to give some short thoughts on what I see as my role as a scholar in terms of providing interviews to the news media. I don't think that I'm a particular expert on the topic of scholarly expertise and the media in particular--I'm not a media studies scholar, I'm a historian--but perhaps because I've had over a decade of experience now with giving interviews, providing briefings, and various other engagements with print, radio, and television media, I can at the least provide some of my own experiences.
First of all, I see an important role for scholars to create knowledge not only for the consumption of scholars in their field of expertise, but to distribute new forms of knowledge more widely beyond their students and their scholarly peers. I entered academia primarily in the pursuit of new research that had not been done before; but I also became a scholar because I believed there were so many histories and stories of our collective past as humans that had been ignored or erased, and that it was a political act of the highest importance to recover these stories and lost histories.
In particular, because of the way that the United States and Canada developed historically as settler colonies dominated by trans-Atlantic migration from Europe, the histories of many others in these societies--native peoples, trans-Pacific migrants, enslaved peoples from Africa--have often been erased or ignored in the national myths that still dominate North American history. When I decided to concentrate in my research on the histories of those peoples left out of familiar accounts of European settlement of the Americas, it was with an awareness that there was a responsibility to help make these histories better known not just among historians, but among as many people as possible to counter the long legacies of colonial histories. To me, the popular media is a necessary ally in making sure that the findings of historical scholarship go beyond the narrow confines of academia.
After years of dealing with media interviews and requests, however, I've learned that there are some very practical considerations to keep in mind when dealing with the popular media.
The first real encounter I had with the world of mass media was in 1996, when I wrote an Op-Ed piece on Tiger Woods turning professional. The essay, entitled "How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes," had come out of some of my historical research on the history of racial categories, in particular the fascination with "race mixing" or what was often labelled "miscegenation." When Tiger Woods turned professional after years of great success as an amateur golfer, the media storm was intense. Speculation abounded about whether his multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Nike and other corporations were because of his "mixed race" heritage. I thought that a historical context for the current interest in people who were supposedly racially "mixed" might be illuminating, and so I sent a short 1000 word essay to the Los Angeles Times. I was surprised when the very next day I received a phone call from one of the editors, asking if my essay was still available. I said that it was, and she told me that the Times would like to print it, after some editing, of course. She offered $150. Being a neophyte scholar, I thought that this was wonderful, and immediately agreed.
It only took a few days after the Op-Ed piece appeared that I began to realize that I had been perhaps a bit naïve. My email began overflowing with responses to my editorial, ranging from vicious insults to incomprehensible rants to very kind and generous notes thanking me for writing the piece. Letters also began arriving by mail, and as I began to notice just how geographically widespread the letter writers were, it became obvious that these readers had not read my piece in the Los Angeles Times. They were mentioning small time papers in Nebraska and Florida and newspapers all across the United States. I suddenly
realized that my thrill at being paid the princely sum of $150 for my writing was ridiculous. The LA Times had syndicated my OpEd piece and sold it again and again to newspapers all across the country. The $150 I had been given was a pittance compared to what they had received in selling my thoughts across the wide networks of print newspapers. I had discovered in a very visceral way just how powerful mass media is in distributing ideas, and how the value of ideas was adjudged in very different ways than in academia.
After this initial foray into the world of mass media publishing, I decided that I would leave the writing to journalists and those whose livelihood depended upon getting paid for what they produced. Since then, my engagement with the world of newspapers, radio, and television has been the much more common role of scholarly expert and supplier of quotes and interviews. This more limited role, however, can still be played in ways that shape the impact of the news stories that are created, and with some preparation and forethought, academics can actually engage in a version of what we now commonly see political "spin doctors" and media relations people doing when they try to shape news stories. Their techniques are often based upon anticipating in very practical ways how news stories are created, and how the very necessary quotes of "experts" and "talking heads" are used within news stories.
Indeed, if you don't anticipate the ways in which your words and ideas might be used in news stories, there are much greater chances that you will be quoted in ways that leave you horrified. And the problem with being misquoted or misused in a mass media news story in the age of the internet is that a Google search of your name will likely bring up that idiotic thing that you supposedly said for time immemorial, and there is no way for you to protest that you had not meant it that way. The fact is, more people may end up reading the one or two sentences quoted in a news story than every thing else you ever write in scholarly essays and books, and so if you end up sounding stupid or just plain wrong, it will be on an level of distribution much greater than most academic writing.
Perhaps it might be useful for me to give you a sense of how news stories are created by using examples of some of the media stories in which I have been quoted, just to show how you can anticipate what reporters and producers are looking for in terms of story lines, and how sometimes what you say and what gets in print or on the air don't always match up!
The very first, and all important practicality, that fundamentally shapes every aspect of news production, is the deadline.
Journalists are usually on incredibly strict deadlines, and the demands of producing daily or weekly news is inexorable and determinative. Often, I will get a phone message or an email in the late morning from a reporter requesting an interview or a quote from me, telling me that they need to hear back from me by the end of the afternoon at the latest. The rapid pace at which news stories are produced is dizzying in comparison with the relatively languid pace at which most academics are used to working! This rush to produce stories, with everything seemingly done at the last minute within the space of a few hours, is probably the most important factor for any scholar to consider when dealing with the media. The speed of production creates a major impact on how scholarly expertise and knowledge is translated within media stories. I use the term "translation" pointedly because words and their meanings can literally change in the process, and what you think you said might end up being very different from what shows up in print or on a newscast.
News stories are put together in different ways by different media, and the more conscious you are of the process by which they are created, the more you can shape the eventual stories.
For example, a journalist for a daily newspaper is usually assigned a story to be produced for that day's news cycle, which means he or she has only a few hours to produce the story. Daily television news operates on the same strict deadline, and time is of an essence. The reporter needs to get quotes as soon as possible, and they are almost desperate to get what they need as soon as they can, and as efficiently as they can. This need to put together a story under such time constraints means that if you supply quotes and information in ways that make it easy for them to write their story, they are much more likely to use what you say in the ways that you intend. Talking for 15 minutes about 10 different ideas and forcing a reporter to choose which one is the most interesting, is very different than making three points using a couple of terse, quotable sentences each.
A more in-depth story might have a deadline of several days or a week, but these are more rare. These kinds of stories allow for more flexibility on the part of the journalist, and they spend much more time interviewing different people and trying to create a richer sense for their readers. But even with more generous deadlines, the way in which your quotes will be used in the eventual story, and how you can shape how they might be used, is similar to a story produced on a strict deadline.
I'll give you a few examples of this in a series of news stories that I became involved in concerning the role of trans-Pacific migration in shaping Vancouver and Canada historically. When I arrived at UBC five years ago, I decided very consciously to engage with the local popular media to shift the ways in which the history of Asian migration to B.C. and Canada was understood. Over the next few years, I began to speak to reporters and editors about various topics, beginning with the history of the Chinese Head Tax, then concerning a series of historical anniversaries that showed the importance of Asian migration in shaping Canada, and more recently the importance of Asian language education in shaping the future of our society. It is important if you are going to regularly speak to the media to establish for yourself and for them the scope of your range of expertise and your willingness to speak to the media on certain subjects.
Just to illustrate how some forethought can greatly shape the way the media presents a story, I'll use the example of a number of news stories in July 2007 about the 10th anniversary of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control. Literally years before July 1, 2007, I became involved in organizing a broad-based coalition of university scholars, community organizations, arts and cultural organizations, and labour union activists, to mark a series of anniversaries in 2007 that showed the great impact of Asian migration on B.C. and Canada. A concerted media strategy was important, and we anticipated a series of moments such as the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover to provide news outlets with prepared story lines. For instance, I organized a forum panel at UBC to provide a number of perspectives on the impact the Hong Kong handover on Vancouver, which resulted in a series of stories in English and Chinese language daily newspapers and television. I also prepared a detailed media briefing listing a series of interesting story lines, anticipating that stories about the Hong Kong handover would take place on July 1, 2007, the actual official date of the transfer of power, and that news stories would be produced within the daily news cycle. If we supplied all the information needed for a reporter on a strict timeline to write story with minimal effort, we could shape news stories about the 1997 HK handover.
The best example of this is a front page story that appeared on July 1st in the Vancouver Sun. If you look at the media briefing and the story lines we supplied, the Vancouver Sun story basically took them verbatim, with many of the points replicated word for word. For instance, we listed the major impacts on Vancouver of the 1997 Handover, and the news story printed this list almost exactly. The news story that appeared on Global National TV's nightly news similarly took several of our prepared story lines.
We took a similar approach to preparing stories about the 100th Anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907. Anticipating that the best moment for news stories to enter the daily news cycle would be the September 8 date on which the riots started, we began preparing half a year beforehand to organize events and story lines that would make for good news stories. We organized a commemorative walk retracing the route of the riot, an academic conference discussing the historical impact of the riot, and a ceremonial reconciliation dinner with over 700 guests drawn from a wide array of community organizations in the Chinese Canadian, Japanese Canadian, South Asian Canadian, and First Nations communities, as well as representatives from dozens of labour unions. We also thought that if some of the research on the 1907 Riots was done by students, this would provide a much more compelling story for news media, and several stories focused upon some undergraduate research work that one of my students, Woan-Jen Wang, conducted on Chinese and Japanese language newspaper reports on the riots, and how they differed from English language reports.
We began supplying stories to producers at CBC Radio over a year in advance, and eventually convinced CBC to become a sponsor in the Anniversaries 07 events. CBC Radio is actually quite unique compared to other media in how it operates. Each of the local radio shows--The Early Edition in the morning, BC Almanac and On the Coast in the afternoon--have a group of producers who do the background research and prepare the guests for the on-air hosts to interview. Getting to know these producers, and having them know you, is crucial. If they know you and the scope of your expertise, then they will call you when a story needs to be produced, since they are on similar deadlines as daily and weekly newspapers. As with the newspaper and television stories, the more that you have prepared the story lines, the easier you make their lives, and the more likely it will be that the story appears in ways that you are comfortable with! With radio, however, you have much more control in shaping a story because your interview will become the content of the story, rather than just a few quotes embedded in a reporter's story in a newspaper, or within a highly edited television story. CBC Radio allows for much greater control over how a story is presented, since it will be your voice that carries the story in an interview.
Not all my engagements with the news media has been as strategically planned as the stories for the 2007 Anniversaries. I was interviewed for a number of stories over the last several years about history of the Chinese Head Tax, in particular about a research project with my colleague Peter Ward. These stories fit into an existing moment of media interest generated by the apology in 2006 by the Canadian Federal government for the Head Tax. However, the same basic principle of strategically preparing useful quotes and storylines before you talk to reporters still applied. In the case of the Chinese Head Tax, I saw my discussion of my own research and getting it into wider public consciousness as part of a much longer and wider campaign that had begun decades before to raise public awareness of the erased and ignored history of Chinese and other trans-Pacific migrants in Canada. Redress for the Chinese Head Tax has been an issue politically for over three decades, and so my goal of putting scholarly research into that conversation supported a broader set of goals that I did not have to directly address myself. This is a crucial point, since there is a line that scholars should be wary of crossing too often. Expertise used too many times for the purpose of advocacy undermines credibility. This is not to say that opinions based upon solid research should not be expressed in clear and compelling ways, just that a balance has to be struck. All knowledge creation, in some sense, is a political act, and so retreating into a false rhetoric of objectivity is ethically misleading. Maintaining some sense of neutrality and detachment from overtly politicized issues, however, is an important part of scholarly engagement with popular media.
There have also been examples of when I have been unhappy with how I have been quoted in news stories. For instance, a recent Vancouver Sun story about how Chinese families in B.C. give English names to their children ended up attributing a quote to me that implied the opposite of what I actually meant. The reporter had been assigned a fluff story that already had a pre-conceived angle. I thought that if I gave her more to work with she might write something more interesting, but I was wrong! It was actually quite embarrassing when people who knew my opinions about Asian language education called me up and asked me why I had said what I hadn't actually said!
For me, as soon as you get the sense that there is little room for maneuver and a very high likelihood of being misquoted or having quotes used in ways that you do not intend, you should ask that your comments not be put on record. I have turned down requests to have quotes attributed if I feel during the conversation that the reporter is looking for a particular angle that I do not feel comfortable with. Just recently, I turned down a request to talk about China and the Olympics because I wasn't sure how the reporter was going to use my comments.
Currently, I have been trying to raise the issue of Mandarin language education in B.C. Several news stories have appeared over the last few years, but I think it will take a few more years before the kinds of messages about research on language education and bilingualism that I think are important to popularize will begin to be reflected in the local news media. That in some sense is the basic strategy for a scholar who wants a particular set of ideas to appear more widely in popular media. Sometimes, you have to repeatedly raise an issue in other interviews where it isn't immediately relevant but will stick in reporters' minds, so that it comes to mind later. The more you are quoted in newspapers talking about certain subjects, the more you are on the radar of journalists and news producers as a scholar who has particular field of expertise. Reporters are people too, and the better relationship you have with them, and the better you understand what needs they have in producing news stories on a tight deadline, the more likely it is that the message that you want to get across is the message that actually gets out...
First of all, I see an important role for scholars to create knowledge not only for the consumption of scholars in their field of expertise, but to distribute new forms of knowledge more widely beyond their students and their scholarly peers. I entered academia primarily in the pursuit of new research that had not been done before; but I also became a scholar because I believed there were so many histories and stories of our collective past as humans that had been ignored or erased, and that it was a political act of the highest importance to recover these stories and lost histories.
In particular, because of the way that the United States and Canada developed historically as settler colonies dominated by trans-Atlantic migration from Europe, the histories of many others in these societies--native peoples, trans-Pacific migrants, enslaved peoples from Africa--have often been erased or ignored in the national myths that still dominate North American history. When I decided to concentrate in my research on the histories of those peoples left out of familiar accounts of European settlement of the Americas, it was with an awareness that there was a responsibility to help make these histories better known not just among historians, but among as many people as possible to counter the long legacies of colonial histories. To me, the popular media is a necessary ally in making sure that the findings of historical scholarship go beyond the narrow confines of academia.
After years of dealing with media interviews and requests, however, I've learned that there are some very practical considerations to keep in mind when dealing with the popular media.
The first real encounter I had with the world of mass media was in 1996, when I wrote an Op-Ed piece on Tiger Woods turning professional. The essay, entitled "How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes," had come out of some of my historical research on the history of racial categories, in particular the fascination with "race mixing" or what was often labelled "miscegenation." When Tiger Woods turned professional after years of great success as an amateur golfer, the media storm was intense. Speculation abounded about whether his multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Nike and other corporations were because of his "mixed race" heritage. I thought that a historical context for the current interest in people who were supposedly racially "mixed" might be illuminating, and so I sent a short 1000 word essay to the Los Angeles Times. I was surprised when the very next day I received a phone call from one of the editors, asking if my essay was still available. I said that it was, and she told me that the Times would like to print it, after some editing, of course. She offered $150. Being a neophyte scholar, I thought that this was wonderful, and immediately agreed.
It only took a few days after the Op-Ed piece appeared that I began to realize that I had been perhaps a bit naïve. My email began overflowing with responses to my editorial, ranging from vicious insults to incomprehensible rants to very kind and generous notes thanking me for writing the piece. Letters also began arriving by mail, and as I began to notice just how geographically widespread the letter writers were, it became obvious that these readers had not read my piece in the Los Angeles Times. They were mentioning small time papers in Nebraska and Florida and newspapers all across the United States. I suddenly
realized that my thrill at being paid the princely sum of $150 for my writing was ridiculous. The LA Times had syndicated my OpEd piece and sold it again and again to newspapers all across the country. The $150 I had been given was a pittance compared to what they had received in selling my thoughts across the wide networks of print newspapers. I had discovered in a very visceral way just how powerful mass media is in distributing ideas, and how the value of ideas was adjudged in very different ways than in academia.
After this initial foray into the world of mass media publishing, I decided that I would leave the writing to journalists and those whose livelihood depended upon getting paid for what they produced. Since then, my engagement with the world of newspapers, radio, and television has been the much more common role of scholarly expert and supplier of quotes and interviews. This more limited role, however, can still be played in ways that shape the impact of the news stories that are created, and with some preparation and forethought, academics can actually engage in a version of what we now commonly see political "spin doctors" and media relations people doing when they try to shape news stories. Their techniques are often based upon anticipating in very practical ways how news stories are created, and how the very necessary quotes of "experts" and "talking heads" are used within news stories.
Indeed, if you don't anticipate the ways in which your words and ideas might be used in news stories, there are much greater chances that you will be quoted in ways that leave you horrified. And the problem with being misquoted or misused in a mass media news story in the age of the internet is that a Google search of your name will likely bring up that idiotic thing that you supposedly said for time immemorial, and there is no way for you to protest that you had not meant it that way. The fact is, more people may end up reading the one or two sentences quoted in a news story than every thing else you ever write in scholarly essays and books, and so if you end up sounding stupid or just plain wrong, it will be on an level of distribution much greater than most academic writing.
Perhaps it might be useful for me to give you a sense of how news stories are created by using examples of some of the media stories in which I have been quoted, just to show how you can anticipate what reporters and producers are looking for in terms of story lines, and how sometimes what you say and what gets in print or on the air don't always match up!
The very first, and all important practicality, that fundamentally shapes every aspect of news production, is the deadline.
Journalists are usually on incredibly strict deadlines, and the demands of producing daily or weekly news is inexorable and determinative. Often, I will get a phone message or an email in the late morning from a reporter requesting an interview or a quote from me, telling me that they need to hear back from me by the end of the afternoon at the latest. The rapid pace at which news stories are produced is dizzying in comparison with the relatively languid pace at which most academics are used to working! This rush to produce stories, with everything seemingly done at the last minute within the space of a few hours, is probably the most important factor for any scholar to consider when dealing with the media. The speed of production creates a major impact on how scholarly expertise and knowledge is translated within media stories. I use the term "translation" pointedly because words and their meanings can literally change in the process, and what you think you said might end up being very different from what shows up in print or on a newscast.
News stories are put together in different ways by different media, and the more conscious you are of the process by which they are created, the more you can shape the eventual stories.
For example, a journalist for a daily newspaper is usually assigned a story to be produced for that day's news cycle, which means he or she has only a few hours to produce the story. Daily television news operates on the same strict deadline, and time is of an essence. The reporter needs to get quotes as soon as possible, and they are almost desperate to get what they need as soon as they can, and as efficiently as they can. This need to put together a story under such time constraints means that if you supply quotes and information in ways that make it easy for them to write their story, they are much more likely to use what you say in the ways that you intend. Talking for 15 minutes about 10 different ideas and forcing a reporter to choose which one is the most interesting, is very different than making three points using a couple of terse, quotable sentences each.
A more in-depth story might have a deadline of several days or a week, but these are more rare. These kinds of stories allow for more flexibility on the part of the journalist, and they spend much more time interviewing different people and trying to create a richer sense for their readers. But even with more generous deadlines, the way in which your quotes will be used in the eventual story, and how you can shape how they might be used, is similar to a story produced on a strict deadline.
I'll give you a few examples of this in a series of news stories that I became involved in concerning the role of trans-Pacific migration in shaping Vancouver and Canada historically. When I arrived at UBC five years ago, I decided very consciously to engage with the local popular media to shift the ways in which the history of Asian migration to B.C. and Canada was understood. Over the next few years, I began to speak to reporters and editors about various topics, beginning with the history of the Chinese Head Tax, then concerning a series of historical anniversaries that showed the importance of Asian migration in shaping Canada, and more recently the importance of Asian language education in shaping the future of our society. It is important if you are going to regularly speak to the media to establish for yourself and for them the scope of your range of expertise and your willingness to speak to the media on certain subjects.
Just to illustrate how some forethought can greatly shape the way the media presents a story, I'll use the example of a number of news stories in July 2007 about the 10th anniversary of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese control. Literally years before July 1, 2007, I became involved in organizing a broad-based coalition of university scholars, community organizations, arts and cultural organizations, and labour union activists, to mark a series of anniversaries in 2007 that showed the great impact of Asian migration on B.C. and Canada. A concerted media strategy was important, and we anticipated a series of moments such as the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover to provide news outlets with prepared story lines. For instance, I organized a forum panel at UBC to provide a number of perspectives on the impact the Hong Kong handover on Vancouver, which resulted in a series of stories in English and Chinese language daily newspapers and television. I also prepared a detailed media briefing listing a series of interesting story lines, anticipating that stories about the Hong Kong handover would take place on July 1, 2007, the actual official date of the transfer of power, and that news stories would be produced within the daily news cycle. If we supplied all the information needed for a reporter on a strict timeline to write story with minimal effort, we could shape news stories about the 1997 HK handover.
The best example of this is a front page story that appeared on July 1st in the Vancouver Sun. If you look at the media briefing and the story lines we supplied, the Vancouver Sun story basically took them verbatim, with many of the points replicated word for word. For instance, we listed the major impacts on Vancouver of the 1997 Handover, and the news story printed this list almost exactly. The news story that appeared on Global National TV's nightly news similarly took several of our prepared story lines.
We took a similar approach to preparing stories about the 100th Anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907. Anticipating that the best moment for news stories to enter the daily news cycle would be the September 8 date on which the riots started, we began preparing half a year beforehand to organize events and story lines that would make for good news stories. We organized a commemorative walk retracing the route of the riot, an academic conference discussing the historical impact of the riot, and a ceremonial reconciliation dinner with over 700 guests drawn from a wide array of community organizations in the Chinese Canadian, Japanese Canadian, South Asian Canadian, and First Nations communities, as well as representatives from dozens of labour unions. We also thought that if some of the research on the 1907 Riots was done by students, this would provide a much more compelling story for news media, and several stories focused upon some undergraduate research work that one of my students, Woan-Jen Wang, conducted on Chinese and Japanese language newspaper reports on the riots, and how they differed from English language reports.
We began supplying stories to producers at CBC Radio over a year in advance, and eventually convinced CBC to become a sponsor in the Anniversaries 07 events. CBC Radio is actually quite unique compared to other media in how it operates. Each of the local radio shows--The Early Edition in the morning, BC Almanac and On the Coast in the afternoon--have a group of producers who do the background research and prepare the guests for the on-air hosts to interview. Getting to know these producers, and having them know you, is crucial. If they know you and the scope of your expertise, then they will call you when a story needs to be produced, since they are on similar deadlines as daily and weekly newspapers. As with the newspaper and television stories, the more that you have prepared the story lines, the easier you make their lives, and the more likely it will be that the story appears in ways that you are comfortable with! With radio, however, you have much more control in shaping a story because your interview will become the content of the story, rather than just a few quotes embedded in a reporter's story in a newspaper, or within a highly edited television story. CBC Radio allows for much greater control over how a story is presented, since it will be your voice that carries the story in an interview.
Not all my engagements with the news media has been as strategically planned as the stories for the 2007 Anniversaries. I was interviewed for a number of stories over the last several years about history of the Chinese Head Tax, in particular about a research project with my colleague Peter Ward. These stories fit into an existing moment of media interest generated by the apology in 2006 by the Canadian Federal government for the Head Tax. However, the same basic principle of strategically preparing useful quotes and storylines before you talk to reporters still applied. In the case of the Chinese Head Tax, I saw my discussion of my own research and getting it into wider public consciousness as part of a much longer and wider campaign that had begun decades before to raise public awareness of the erased and ignored history of Chinese and other trans-Pacific migrants in Canada. Redress for the Chinese Head Tax has been an issue politically for over three decades, and so my goal of putting scholarly research into that conversation supported a broader set of goals that I did not have to directly address myself. This is a crucial point, since there is a line that scholars should be wary of crossing too often. Expertise used too many times for the purpose of advocacy undermines credibility. This is not to say that opinions based upon solid research should not be expressed in clear and compelling ways, just that a balance has to be struck. All knowledge creation, in some sense, is a political act, and so retreating into a false rhetoric of objectivity is ethically misleading. Maintaining some sense of neutrality and detachment from overtly politicized issues, however, is an important part of scholarly engagement with popular media.
There have also been examples of when I have been unhappy with how I have been quoted in news stories. For instance, a recent Vancouver Sun story about how Chinese families in B.C. give English names to their children ended up attributing a quote to me that implied the opposite of what I actually meant. The reporter had been assigned a fluff story that already had a pre-conceived angle. I thought that if I gave her more to work with she might write something more interesting, but I was wrong! It was actually quite embarrassing when people who knew my opinions about Asian language education called me up and asked me why I had said what I hadn't actually said!
For me, as soon as you get the sense that there is little room for maneuver and a very high likelihood of being misquoted or having quotes used in ways that you do not intend, you should ask that your comments not be put on record. I have turned down requests to have quotes attributed if I feel during the conversation that the reporter is looking for a particular angle that I do not feel comfortable with. Just recently, I turned down a request to talk about China and the Olympics because I wasn't sure how the reporter was going to use my comments.
Currently, I have been trying to raise the issue of Mandarin language education in B.C. Several news stories have appeared over the last few years, but I think it will take a few more years before the kinds of messages about research on language education and bilingualism that I think are important to popularize will begin to be reflected in the local news media. That in some sense is the basic strategy for a scholar who wants a particular set of ideas to appear more widely in popular media. Sometimes, you have to repeatedly raise an issue in other interviews where it isn't immediately relevant but will stick in reporters' minds, so that it comes to mind later. The more you are quoted in newspapers talking about certain subjects, the more you are on the radar of journalists and news producers as a scholar who has particular field of expertise. Reporters are people too, and the better relationship you have with them, and the better you understand what needs they have in producing news stories on a tight deadline, the more likely it is that the message that you want to get across is the message that actually gets out...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
