This is the value of professional journalism

I have stumbled across a great example of the value of the professional journalist. And, ironically, it is through a failure in reporting that the reporter's value is revealed.

There has been alot of pretty low-grade discussion of late over the value of the traditional journalist, especially because “citizen journalism” – i.e. blogs and camera phones – have seized the initiative in a few recent big events.

And then, of course, there is the ongoing pseudo-saga of the mainstream media apparently not reporting things properly because of some evil and wild desire to control what people think.

But in the main front page story in The Guardian yesterday, a reporter's true value was revealed. It was an odd story to lead with – a barely known Chinese pro-democracy activist was beaten up. Especially because the obvious lead story was the enormous earthquake in Pakistan.

But the kicker was that this bloke was attacked while a Guardian reporter was there with him. It was the lead and then a piece by the journalist also took over the whole of page 3.

It was a dramatic tale alright. And, as the paper made clear, it was no where near certain whether the bloke – Lu Banglie – was even alive. He had, the report said, been taken away by a police car and not an ambulance.

The Guardian reporter was also man-handled and feared for his life. He wrote a highly charged account which left you in little doubt that Lu Banglie was probably dead. It included this para:


They slowed down but never stopped. He lay there – his eye out of its socket, his tongue cut, a stream of blood dropping from his mouth, his body limp, twisted. The ligaments in his neck were broken, so his head lay sideways as if connected to the rest of his body by a rubber band.


Except it now turns out that none of this was true. Because today, also in the Guardian, a second story reveals that Lu Banglie is badly bruised but not dead.

In fact, Mr Banglie spoke to a different Guardian journalist, and gave a very different account to the previous day's:


“When I came around, I was too nauseous to eat. My body aches all over and my head hurts.” But he said only his arm was visibly wounded.


Note that his eye is still in his head, his neck isn't broken and his tongue isn't cut.

Equally if the original story's account of him being beaten and kicked for 10 minutes, of people stamping on his head, and of numerous other details, there is simply no way Mr Baglie would be describing himself as he is. In fact he probably wouldn't be able to talk.

Now I'm not saying that the first reporter knowingly lied to get his moment of glory in the paper. He probably thought he had seen that. And would know better than anyone because he was actually there. It was just that he was wildly wrong.

Ask any policeman and he will tell you that at any disturbance, people will have completely different stories as to what happened.

By writing personally, and by using his first-hand witnessing experience as the justification by which he could bypass all his journalistic training, the original reporter turned himself into a single source of information and not – as the media's job is – a useful and largely objective observer providing as accurate a picture of what happened as possible.

If you ever question the value of the professional journalist and the mainstream media it is here in this story. The media is never always right but in most cases it does the best job it can to give the most accurate view.

Journalists are, as the saying goes, writing the first draft of history. And they do it in an amazingly short period of time.