Getting the Scoop and the Power of Pure Reporting
Wall Street Journal reporter Liza Lin and Bloomberg News columnist Dan Moss share how to get the story out when press freedom is limited.
by Madeleine Sherer, National Press Foundation
Many of the worst offenders on the World Press Freedom Index are in Asia, too often jailing and threatening journalists for doing their jobs.
In the face of such dire consequences, many journalists at NPF’s International Trade Journalism Fellowship had questions about survival -that of themselves as well as their stories.
“One solution is to work with an investigative journalism network globally,” said Liza Lin, a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers China tech out of Singapore. “It just might be a case where your newspaper cannot take credit for it, but you work through a conduit that you trust. Then they get the story out in a broader fashion. … A lot of Asian governments are becoming more and more authoritarian and cracking down on speech and using law to do it, but this is also why we shouldn’t be afraid of that and think of different ways that we can get the news out.”
The International Consortium for Investigative Journalists, for instance, published the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers and FinCEN Files. Reporters Without Borders, Global Investigative Journalism Network and Committee to Protect Journalists are also resources for international reporters.
Lin said that whenever she’s on a new beat, she starts by talking to the best and brightest people in that field. She asks them questions like, “What do you think the media is not reporting correctly?” or, “What do you think the media is under-reporting?” This often helps her gain a new perspective on the subject and leads to more story ideas. She also found that the best sources tend to come from the periphery of an industry, since those are the people who are more willing to share potentially compromising information with a journalist.
“All the company scoops never come from the CEO, they come from their assistants,” Lin said.
She mentioned a story she wrote on the purchase of American-made computer chips by Chinese nuclear weapons labs, something that had supposedly been outlawed by the U.S. for several years. Lin said the story was based on hard data, but she got the original tip in a conversation over drinks.
“Once you get that tip, you find the right databases to factcheck this person. The data just only makes your story a lot more trustworthy, reliable and believable,” she said. “But data aside, you get the best stories when you go out and you talk to people.”
Dan Moss, an opinion columnist for Bloomberg News, added that it’s a good idea to regularly talk to labor unions while reporting on trade as well.
“Companies will try to engage with unions very early to prevent any disruption, and unions will have a sense of what’s going to go on. They may well be opposed to the said initiative, but they’ll know something about it,” Moss said.
Moss said that the trade beat can get weighed down with a slog of acronyms and slogans.
“GATT, APEC, WTO. Then there’s the number suite, Section 301, Section 302, Section 305. What do all things mean? I think if the trade beat suffers from one very heavy burden, it’s there tends to be an overemphasis on process. This stage talks. This track of negotiations,” he said. “Just try to bring it back to someone is trying to sell something in market A to somebody in market B.”
Speakers: Liza Lin, Reporter and Editor, China Tech, Wall Street Journal
Dan Moss: Opinion Columnist, Bloomberg
Transcript, summary and resources: nationalpress.org/topic/trade...
This fellowship is part of an ongoing program of journalism training and awards for trade coverage sponsored by the Hinrich Foundation.
This video was produced within the Evelyn Y. Davis studios. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
25 июн 2024
