AS EXAMPLE of what reporting is like, I will describe my experience which illustrates vividly the kind of demands journalism makes of those who choose it as a profession.
Probably when he enters the profession the young journalist believes he is going to review books and plays and write articles about walking tours. He quickly finds that journalism means exploiting your sensitiveness, selling it to pro deuce copy. It is a queer game, like selling your soul to the devil. You thrust yourself, or are thrust, into tragedy or sordid horror, and you sell your reactions to it in the shape of a good vivid human story. You must feel enough to make your story moving, to give it that "human touch"- you must be careful not to feel so much that your nerve gives way, and you fail in the crisis to telephone that moving column for which your paper is waiting. You must produce vivid, readable matter to order- not later, say than 10.45. That doesn't mean that your stuff need be shoddy or insincere, or that you must overstep the bounds of decent conduct. A reporter who does his job properly may do great good. He may touch the springs of human pity and let the public know of need. Publicity too is a powerful deterrent to crime.But there is a real danger, as we have seen in recent years, that in the fierce struggle to be first with the story and to make it fuller and more exciting than anyone else's you may be tempted to do something unfair and possibly harmful to the people involved.
I had been joking with the crew that morning and Segrave had described how the water was like concrete if you hit it at speed and would crush your ribs unless you wore a safety jacket. Then he had roped in a group of us, who had been reporting his speedboat's daily trials for a fortnight to be photographed with him on the landing stage. He was happy and talkative because after many delays and disappointments the boat was ready and he felt confident he would beat the record that day.
The speed attempt, you will remember, was over a measured mile not far from the head of Windermere, and we travelled up to the course in an old tub which the boatman had told us was the fastest on the lake, but which must have been the slowest by several knots.
The result was that we arrived only just in time to see Segrave's boat disappear suddenly in a cloud of spray. Horrified, we watched the surface from which it had vanished. A head appeared, then another, and we learned that Segrave and one of his mechanics had been taken out, but another- the man I had lent my pencil to when he set off, was still at the bottom of the lake. When they got him out later, he still had my pencil tightly clutched in his hand. He had been making recordings with it.
While we watched and waited, the great speedboat reared itself above the surface with a curious lethargy, like a dead fish turning over.For an eternity, as it seemed, it stayed with it's beautiful prow pointing skyward, and then it turned slowly over and gradually settled down.
I shall always remember the feeling of helplessness I had during those dreadful minutes: the unwilling realisation that the mechanic must be drowned by this time;; the impression of thousands of people in boats or lining the shore, all silent, all one vast desire to help; pitiful in their unbelieving stare at the spot where this had just happened before their eyes.
And then, while we still stared, a first sound breaking that
enormous silence, from one of the reporters in the boat. “What a story”.
Immediately the need to get back to the landing stage gripped us.
Some of the evening newspapers began to abuse the boatman because the boat was
slow and they were anxious. Their duty as reporters was to get to a telephone as
quickly with the least possible delay and tell the world. Crowds in London,
Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham were waiting to hear the news. They
had to be told that Segrave’s boat had overturned and that Segrave himself was dangerously
injured. And when the first messages had been flashed to newspaper offices all
over the country, we, as reporters had to find out quickly how Segrave was
getting on, where they had taken him, whether he was likely to live.
Instead of those austere hills we could see nothing but a tangle of problems to be solved that instant. How to get the use of a phone quickly (the more experienced of us had settled that already and had prepared for an emergency like this by booking fixed time calls put through to some hotel phone from our offices every quarter of an hour to check the facts and arrange them coherently.
Each of us was seeking feverishly for words to frame his message.You see the strain of it all- the conflict between normal human feeling recoiling from the tragedy of what had happened, and the inescapable need to discipline your emotions and concentrate grimly on getting through to the office with the news.“Now what do we KNOW?” said one of the men from the News Agencies. “What are the facts we KNOW. Let's write them down and get them clear”. He spoke half to himself, half in an appeal for collaboration.The job must be tackled. It must be tackled at once. No time for pity or dismay or the analysing of our own confused emotions. They would want the story telephoned immediately we landed and would not be content with bare details.A sleek speedboat passed us, and in it we saw the correspondent of one of the London evening newspapers with a smirk on his face. He had been smart; he had managed to get the owner of a fast private boat to take him ashore.One of his rivals in our slow tub groaned and swore. “He'll have a good ten minutes start” he said “The Evening Standard will be on the streets with it before my message gets through. Heavens, man! Can't your paralytic tub go faster than this?” And while he shouted at the boatman others shouted back “Shut your trap man, we're trying to write”.That night a member of the Windermere Boat Club who had helped to take Segrave to the house on the west bank of the lake where he died, told me with contempt of the behaviour of a reporter whom I recognised as the man who had been raging in the boat. It seemed that this reporter had got into the house on false pretences; whoever had let him in being under the impression that he was a friend of the family, and when he learned that Segrave had just died he lost control and rushed out asking for a telephone to send off the news. This boat club member was disgusted at his conduct. I could at least understand it. For I knew that this reporter had been beaten by his rival getting the first news through of the accident and that he had set out desperately to the house where Segrave was lying in the hopes of getting later news which would atone for his earlier failure. When he found that segrave had died he knew that he could save himself completely from the editorial complaint in store if only he could get to a telephone and be first through with this far more important news, the news of Segraves death. That accounted for his ill concealed excitement, which my boat club friend had found so revolting in the tragic circumstances.
Instead of those austere hills we could see nothing but a tangle of problems to be solved that instant. How to get the use of a phone quickly (the more experienced of us had settled that already and had prepared for an emergency like this by booking fixed time calls put through to some hotel phone from our offices every quarter of an hour to check the facts and arrange them coherently.
Each of us was seeking feverishly for words to frame his message.You see the strain of it all- the conflict between normal human feeling recoiling from the tragedy of what had happened, and the inescapable need to discipline your emotions and concentrate grimly on getting through to the office with the news.“Now what do we KNOW?” said one of the men from the News Agencies. “What are the facts we KNOW. Let's write them down and get them clear”. He spoke half to himself, half in an appeal for collaboration.The job must be tackled. It must be tackled at once. No time for pity or dismay or the analysing of our own confused emotions. They would want the story telephoned immediately we landed and would not be content with bare details.A sleek speedboat passed us, and in it we saw the correspondent of one of the London evening newspapers with a smirk on his face. He had been smart; he had managed to get the owner of a fast private boat to take him ashore.One of his rivals in our slow tub groaned and swore. “He'll have a good ten minutes start” he said “The Evening Standard will be on the streets with it before my message gets through. Heavens, man! Can't your paralytic tub go faster than this?” And while he shouted at the boatman others shouted back “Shut your trap man, we're trying to write”.That night a member of the Windermere Boat Club who had helped to take Segrave to the house on the west bank of the lake where he died, told me with contempt of the behaviour of a reporter whom I recognised as the man who had been raging in the boat. It seemed that this reporter had got into the house on false pretences; whoever had let him in being under the impression that he was a friend of the family, and when he learned that Segrave had just died he lost control and rushed out asking for a telephone to send off the news. This boat club member was disgusted at his conduct. I could at least understand it. For I knew that this reporter had been beaten by his rival getting the first news through of the accident and that he had set out desperately to the house where Segrave was lying in the hopes of getting later news which would atone for his earlier failure. When he found that segrave had died he knew that he could save himself completely from the editorial complaint in store if only he could get to a telephone and be first through with this far more important news, the news of Segraves death. That accounted for his ill concealed excitement, which my boat club friend had found so revolting in the tragic circumstances.
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