Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art
Dan RatherRead
This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's, on its best day, is a crude art. We make mistakes; I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist, I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories, make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.
Interpretation
Journalism blends creativity and imperfection, acknowledging human error in storytelling.
Dan Rather's quote reflects the nature of journalism as an art form rather than a strict science, highlighting the inevitability of mistakes in the pursuit of truth. With decades of experience, he admits to the errors made over the years, underlining that the journalist's journey is fraught with challenges, creativity, and a need for humility in the profession.
In practice
During a lecture about the challenges of journalism, I quoted Dan Rather to emphasize the art involved in reporting.
Journalism is not a precise science, it's a crude art
Only votes talk, everything else walks.
From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it.
A college degree is the key to realizing the American dream, well worth the financial sacrifice because it is supposed to open the door to a world of opportunity.
Covering the civil-rights movement was a mind- and eye-opener for me. Houston was a segregated society, as was Texas as a whole - some of it by law, a lot of it by fear and tradition. But there was no violence where I lived, and if there was hate, it was either concealed from me or I just didn't recognize it.
Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.
With a genre like film noir, everyone has these assumptions and expectations. And once all of those things are in place, that's when you can really start to twist it about and mess around with it.
Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way.
So I have no grounds to complain; on the contrary, writers should consider the condition of permanent controversiality to be invigorating, part of the risk envolved in choosing the profesión. It is a fact of life that writers have always and with due consideration and great pleasure spit in the soup of the high and mighty. That is what makes the history of literature analogous to the development and refinement of censorship.
As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.
I don't think you should feel about a film. You should feel about a woman, not a movie. You can't kiss a movie.
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
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