Today’s episode of Little Miss Know-it-All: How to read a news story.

Most people don’t really read news stories. (Shhh, don’t tell the media.) They read the headlines and look at the pictures. They skim most stories. If something looks really interesting, they’ll read that story and then forget most of the details.

Readers usually do very little analysis of news stories. They typically don’t check to see if the headline is correct (sometimes it’s not). They don’t think about whether the quotes make sense (sometimes they don’t). They don’t take the time to wonder whether the story itself is plausible (sometimes it’s not). Their analysis usually goes like this:
1) Does this match my existing opinions?
2) If so, accept without question. If not, reject as biased.
3) Go on to the next headline.

(In case you were wondering, this is also the way people read blogs.)

I’ve already told you how to check a journalist’s facts. But sometimes there’s a bigger issue: the entire focus of the story is incorrect.

My blog buddy/thug sistah Jackie is dealing with this problem this week. Jackie is the MotherCorp’s reporter in Rankin Inlet. The headline on the local paper was “Hotels say radio report may harm business”, and she has blogged about it here. The story itself is behind a pay wall, but I can summarise it:
1) Jackie did a story about hotels that were full in 2008 because of a busy construction season. The story mentioned that this year’s construction season will be starting soon.
2) There is not as much construction in Rankin Inlet right now, so there are fewer construction workers who need hotel rooms.
3) This is Jackie’s fault.
4) One construction company is breaking the terms of its contract by not putting its workers in a licensed hotel.
5) This is also Jackie’s fault.

Did that make you shake your head a bit?

Yeah, I hope so. Sometimes, summarizing a news story will help you to identify the problems with it.

Now, from my summary above, it might be clear that the real news is in line #4. Sadly, that is not the focus of this story. Neither is the story about how a mere reporter might be powerful enough to take down an entire industry with a single news item.

Perhaps there’s some wishful thinking going on here.

So now we have an obvious story about a contract issue that is having a ripple effect on the hotel business in Rankin Inlet, but as presented in the paper, it’s all about a bad, bad competing reporter who is the entire reason nobody’s staying in Rankin hotels.

Now, ordinarily this is where I would probably be generous and assume that Jackie’s original radio story was at least partly incorrect, but the hotel owner told her that it wasn’t. The only thing here that has anything to do with Jackie, from what I can tell, is that the company with the contract dispute chose to misinterpret her story.

So this, dear reader, is where your responsibilities kick in. Reading the headline isn’t going to tell you about this contract issue. Sure, you could shrug and mutter to yourself that the CBC ALWAYS gets things wrong, but if you do that, you’ll never know what the real news is.

You don’t need a journalism degree to find the news in a badly written story; you just need to pay attention to what you’re reading. You’re going to be looking for the thing that makes you shake your head. It’s that hold on — what?? revelation that’s not in the headline and seems somewhat out of place.

When a reporter has missed the real news, it’s usually buried in the back half of the story. (This is the point where people who actually know something about the issue throw up their hands and shout that THERE IS NO POINT IN TALKING TO REPORTERS ANYWAY.) It’s still there, because whoever did the original interview was very careful to mention it several times. It didn’t fit with the sexy story (RADIO JOURNALIST DESTROYS LOCAL BUSINESS) but there was still a hole in the paper, so the reporter stuck it in to fill space.

When you read the newspaper or watch the news, pay attention to the last half of every story. That may be where you’ll find the real news.