Ground School for the Press

It is early morning in the newsroom of a typical American daily newspaper. You are one of the several reporters covering news on the local beats. Your plan for the day includes wrapping up a feature about a child math whiz that is scheduled to run in the Sunday paper, lining up interviews on a labor dispute at the local meat-packing plant, and handling whatever spot news the editors throw your way, to be written up on deadline for tomorrow’s editions.

You sit down at your desk, slurp some caffeine from a clammy cup of takeout coffee, and open the big-city paper that covers your town to see if it has launched one of its occasional journalistic raids on your territory. Out of the corner of one eye you see your editor rise from behind his desk and move toward you, holding in his hand a piece of paper on which assignments are scrawled. Each morning, that piece of paper contains the script for the first few hours of your day. Warm, fuzzy greetings are not his cup of tea. He’s been here since before dawn; as far as he’s concerned, the day is well under way. (He’s a nice guy in his gruff way, but somehow the old dog makes you feel like a bit of a laggard, no matter how early you show up for work.)

"You know that nuclear accident they had in Japan the other day." He doesn’t ask it; he says it and assumes that you know what he’s talking about, because it’s news. "Maybe it would be a good idea to call the local nuke people and see what they have to say about the safety of their plant here in town."

Ah, yes, you think to yourself, the typical "reaction story"—no pun intended. When doing a reaction story you take something that happened somewhere in the world and get the local reaction, interviewing hometown sources who may (or may not) have something intelligent to say about the subject. Such an assignment is also known in the trade as a "Could it happen here?" story. Reporters may write dozens of them in the course of a career. Larry Smith, the managing editor at the Laconia, New Hampshire, Evening Citizen, one of four dailies where I worked, called it the "Bronx angle" story because "whenever anything happens in the world, you find out someone involved was from the Bronx."

Your editor has one more thing for you to do. "One of those small planes crashed last night at that little airport near the mall. Check on that…maybe Congressman Blah was right about closing that place down." He turns away and heads for another reporter’s desk. He needs to ask her how the vote on raising sewer taxes fared at last night’s city council meeting.

A routine kind of day, with a variety of issues to write about. Your coverage of each will be necessarily terse, constrained by limited space in the newspaper. You will also tread lightly on each subject in recognition of the fact that you are by no means an expert on meat-packing plants, math, nuclear power, or aviation. But since newspaper articles contain no disclaimers of a reporter’s knowledge—or lack of it—the opinions of thousands of readers may be shaped by your reporting. In fact, you are still red-faced about the errors in a feature you wrote about a new coronary angioplasty lab at Memorial Hospital. The errors slipped through because the editors didn’t know any more about cardiology than you did. A brief attempt to reverse the error is scheduled to run on page six, in a little box titled "Correction Corner."

You wish that you knew more about all the fascinating issues you write about, but who has time to study them all? Big-budget news organizations have a few specialists who write about subjects in which they have expertise. But this paper, with a news staff of 50 reporters, editors, and photographers—including the 15 staffers who cover local sports—covers a community of 200,000 people top to bottom.

Next week, however, there may be a chance to gain some new insights into one of these subject areas—aviation. The state press association is holding its annual conference and awards banquet at the local convention center. You like these annual gatherings, especially the refresher seminars on newswriting style, recent libel cases, and First Amendment rulings. But this year you notice a new title in the seminar lineup: "Ground school for the press: How to avoid common errors in aviation reporting."

This seminar may well be worth attending. Not only is that little "general aviation" airport in town a source of political controversy, but you also have come to realize that some common notions you have always held to be true about aviation turned out to be wrong. For example, everyone knows that jet airplanes came out after propeller-driven airplanes, but it was still wrong for the paper to have suggested in a recent editorial that the local commuter airline replace its "aging" fleet of turboprops in the interest of safety. (Turns out the planes are a modern design and were built only last year.) You were also surprised to learn recently that a student pilot who lost control of an airplane in a gusty wind was not breaking the law by flying alone. And considering Congressman Blah’s demands to close the local airport, you were surprised to see on TV news last night him stepping out of a charter aircraft during a campaign swing to the more distant section of his district.

You have always wanted to learn how to fly. In fact, writing a story about a flight lesson is on your list of ideas to write up some day. Your editor does not share your enthusiasm. "You’d never get me up in one of those things," he snorts.

So you get ahold of the info packet for this two-hour seminar and peruse the syllabus. To begin with, each journalist will be given a list of facts and quotes about a hypothetical aviation news story, such as an accident. Then he or she must quickly write up a short spot-news story based on the information. At the end of the seminar, the articles will be reviewed to see how they might have been handled differently.

Next come the discussion groups. The first topic is titled "What keeps an airplane in the air? A nonpilot’s intro to aerodynamics." Fifteen minutes—heck, how bad can that be?

Then comes a discussion of pilots and their training: Apparently there is some kind of system of "certificates and ratings" that sets out the training that pilots get, and what they can do once they have passed their tests. You note with interest that flight instructors receive special training; they aren’t just pilots who volunteered to teach other pilots. Differences in "categories" and "classes" of aircraft will be briefly covered.

Finally, here is a seminar that will explain the difference between instrument and visual flying, how the weather affects flying, and how pilots train for instrument flying and navigating. There will even be a simulator on hand to demonstrate flying on instruments.

You were surprised—and a bit dismayed—to discover when covering an aviation story that most airports do not have a control tower. Since then you have been wondering who gives all those pilots permission to take off and land at those fields. (Answer: Nobody!) This discussion will include a layman’s guide to airspace. Apparently there are different rules for flying in different kinds of airspace; good stuff for a reporter to know.

The process of determining the cause of aviation mishaps will also be explained. It says that this process can take months. (That would explain why the accident investigators got so mad when you wrote that "two days after a tragic crash, investigators still don’t know what caused the single-engine plane to go down.")

The most interesting part of the seminar will come at the end. You will look at the stories that you wrote at the beginning, based on the set of facts you received, and discuss changes you might make to your news copy in light of the knowledge you have gained. Then, the next time aviation news breaks on your beats, you can help the editors to steer the right course to maintain accuracy and avoid the common pitfalls. Maybe you will even be assigned to cover the aviation beat from now on, giving you a great reason to learn to fly.

Dan Namowitz is a writer and flight instructor living in Maine.

A media resource

How AOPA and you can make a difference in GA coverage

By Drew Steketee

The AOPA Communications Division handles more than 2,000 media calls annually. Many come on the heels of local air crashes or national news like the John F. Kennedy Jr. tragedy. But reporters also seek routine information and AOPA perspective on policy or technical issues. AOPA catches problems in advance by explaining technical concepts and correcting misinterpretations, presumptions, and unintended bias. When bad information is published, AOPA often responds with a letter to the editor or a call to the reporter.

We’ve won the media’s respect because we help them to write better, more accurate stories. Our stated goal is "fair, accurate, and insightful" coverage. Reporters want this help; their first responsibility is accuracy. They’ll value your help if your information is accurate and free of blind self-interest. They’re on guard for "spin" or publicity hounds.

To do its job, AOPA Communications doesn’t wait by the phone. Each year, we send fresh reference materials (including AOPA’s Airport Directory) to 1,250 newsrooms. Included are special phone numbers to reach AOPA Vice President of Communications Warren Morningstar or me directly. We buy listings in directories that reporters use to find sources. AOPA’s role as the authoritative "Voice of General Aviation" earns us a chance to help. We reinforce this with occasional media demo flights and our extensive press release service.

But we can’t reach every reporter. That’s where you come in. Get to know who covers aviation locally and introduce yourself. If you see an error, raise the issue. AOPA’s "Fly-A-Reporter" and "How to Write a Letter to the Editor" brochures suggest how, but be sure to have your facts straight. The annual AOPA Fact Card and upcoming AOPA Fact Sheets will help. Get these resources by writing AOPA Communications, 421 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701. Help AOPA’s media monitoring by sending relevant press clips to the same address. And suggest that fair, accurate, and insightful coverage be submitted for the annual AOPA Max Karant Journalism Awards competition.

Media ground school? The author of the accompanying article, writer Dan Namowitz, has the right idea, but the media today has almost no time (or budget) to be away for training. AOPA has participated in past attempts at this, including one by the National Transportation Safety Board. The late, lamented Aviation/Space Writers Association (AWA) also tried seminars. It also published the Air Accidents and the News Writer guide that AOPA distributed after AWA’s demise.

This year, AOPA plans a new national guide for the media. It won’t be as direct as a training exercise, but more reporters might use it. We also plan media databases for the increasingly Web-dependent press. Beyond that, pilots might think globally and act locally. Could you conduct a reporter seminar with the help of some media-savvy pilot in your community? Or why not just make arrangements to fly a reporter in your town?

Drew Steketee is AOPA’s senior vice president of Communications.