(Emailed 20 June 2007)
I found Ali Bell’s coverage of Arlene Morgan perceptive and thoughtful – until I got to the quote from me and the query about what I meant.
Ali Bell is surely being disingenuous. My meaning (I thought) was clear enough – train journalists in diversity reporting as they enter the occupation and make change from the bottom-up (as well as approaching the problem of patchy diversity reporting from the top-down).
I devote a lot of my time at the Journalists Training Organisation (JTO) working at these issues. Comments like Bell’s are understandable, I guess, since to her I probably represent the big bad media. Of course, I see myself as a facilitator working for positive change. Hopefully, any changes the JTO can make will eventually convince cynics like Ms Bell that not everyone is blind to the iniquities of what is happening.
Jim Tucker
Executive Director
NZ Journalists Training Organisation
Wellington
Ali Bell – BroadsWord: Seeking the ‘other’ voices of the nation
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Ms Bell replies: Indeed, I am guilty of a flippant remark about coming from the bottom, at Mr Tucker's expense. Quite right. I acknowledge Mr Tucker's hard work for positive change regarding diversity reporting through the Journalism Training Organisation(I also really liked his journo training book Intro. I actually read it. And I will never cease to be delighted on how applicable is the title.)
I don't see the media as big and bad, nor Mr Tucker as representing it. I love the media - as much as I do education, no, more so. I've been knocking about in it as some kind of fringe dweller for years, and I am delighted to be well doused and well educated in it.
I do see Mr Tucker as part of an organisation - the JTO - that posts great articles on their website. But since reading Mr Tucker's comment, I have thought a lot about cynicism. I think I saw him in the lobby of the APN building the other day, and I was going to go up to him and say, "Thanks for reading my column posting, and yes, Mr Tucker – you’re right - I'm a dreadful cynic. I do apologise."
But it was on the day that roofs were being blown off, I think, and I had to get back to work with already too many ions buzzing (I think wind has positive ions, which are negative?). Oh, the perils of office life. And, she says plaintively, we know that cynics are usually the most
idealistic among us don't we? Just grown older, wiser, and more educated. Possibly dreadfully thwarted!
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