The story that never was
The story that never was
Negotiating with sources for the control of a story + readings on how we see the world and tell its stories.
However you found your way here, welcome! I’m Emily, and I write letters about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world and our place in it.
Being a journalist in Malaysia means that sources will often ask to read your draft before publication. In line with journalism ethics, I always say no, and they usually accept this on the strength of my previous work and after I assure them I’ll make sure to check the veracity of any facts or quotes I’m unsure about. The most I’ve ever done is to let them know which quotes I’m going to use.
Once, though, that wasn’t enough.
A conservationist did stick to their decision not to speak to me when I said I couldn’t share my draft with them—my editor was, of course, also adamant about this. And since that conservationist was the main source for a particular project we wanted to highlight, there ended up being no story. We approached another source on different talking points instead.
The conservationist had insisted on seeing a draft even though they said that they could see from my work that I “write truthfully”, and the story would be for a reputable global outlet. They said that of all the requests they had received lately, they were most inclined to talk to me, but that they would need to see a draft. It wouldn’t even have to be the final draft, but a draft; they would not interfere with the nitty-gritty of the piece. I worried that this meant they wanted to ascertain that the general thrust of the piece would be “safe” for them. They said they simply feared that any misunderstanding could lead to their project, which depended on government approval, being blocked and its progress threatened—which, in a political climate that isn’t entirely free, is understandable.
When I spoke of this encounter (without divulging identities) with another conservationist, they commiserated with me but understood where this conservationist was coming from. They, too, have had their comments taken out of context in the past, perhaps by less attentive or experienced journalists. But they also said that, perhaps, in the moment, when asked a question on the phone, they themselves had not been careful enough to clarify or qualify the things they said, which contributed to any misunderstanding—which is why they often prefer a list of questions in advance.
I actually get this. I’m very sympathetic to this. It feels like a kind of meta issue we all grapple with (especially these days when a person’s comments are not usually first taken on good faith): the need to qualify a statement so it’s as accurate as possible, when certain formats don’t always encourage it. I feel that anxiety when I write, especially shorter-form news stories, where one has to be, ideally, both concise and comprehensive. And if the tables were turned and I were the interviewee, I know I would also feel the same anxiety.
It makes me think how important communication skills are, for everyone, so that one can anticipate how something one says could be read in different contexts (though doing this too much can have a paralysing effect). I’ve seen people receive backlash for something they were quoted on in a story, because they hadn’t realised how what they said could be interpreted. I’ve encountered interviewees like that myself in my own stories, and have sometimes wondered whether I should confirm a quote or leave out something that provided colour but which was not essential to the story itself, or which did not accurately reflect the sum of their views. Sometimes, it depends on how media-savvy I think an interviewee is. I think I see journalism, in part, as a medium to help different groups in society communicate better with each other. It’s a place where people talk to each other through an intermediary—the journalist—so as a journalist, you’ve got to do your best to reflect their views as accurately as possible, and then make sense of what it all means for a general audience.
Having said that, I think it’s important to keep in balance something Helen Lewis said, collected at the bottom of this newsletter: Don’t save people from themselves too much—and definitely not at all when it involves any wrongdoing on their part!
How we see the world & tell its stories
If you’re on Substack Notes, you’ll probably have come across recommendations for Jillian Hess’ newsletter,
, about how famous writers, artists, and storytellers organised their notebooks—which continues where her book How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information left off. I’m still making my way through her archive, and it’s hard for me to pick out a particular letter—but here’s one:
“Landscape and Narrative” by Barry Lopez:
Draw on the smell of creosote bush, or clack stones together in the dry air. Feel how light is the desiccated dropping of the kangaroo rat. Study an animal track obscured by the wind. These are all elements of the land, and what makes the landscape comprehensible are the relationships between them. One learns a landscape finally not by knowing the name or identity of everything in it, but by perceiving the relationships in it—like that between the sparrow and the twig.
“Can there ever be a neat history of colonialism?” by Malaysian historian Farish A. Noor:
For postcolonial societies across the world, the messy reality of collaboration remains a sore point for many. Yet it cannot be denied that the colonial armies of Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain and others were made up of native troops who actively took part in the colonial enterprise and colonial policing. Teaching about this in the context of present-day postcolonial societies can be difficult, particularly in cases where the colonial praxis of divide-and-rule meant that different ethnic groups were given distinct roles—in the colonial army, colonial police, colonial bureaucracy and colonial economy—and all the while kept divided among themselves.
Poh Si Teng, a Malaysian who is currently the Executive Editorial Producer for ABC News Studios at Disney, made a keynote address to this year’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival on “finding true artistic integrity in the age of corporate documentary”. She talks about making different kinds of films for different reasons and for different audiences, and in there I found a timely reminder that there are some things you can make more for yourself (and not necessarily just when you’re at the start of your career):
Some stories, we are told, “do well,” some are “too niche,” some “too general,” some “not commercial enough”… We know how long that list runs.
In the past 20 years, I’ve had the privilege of wearing different hats in nonfiction storytelling: as a print journalist, a cameraperson, an independent director and producer, a documentary commissioner, a grantmaker, and now a studio executive.
Having worked on a variety of documentary films and in different capacities, I’ve learned this: You can only tell a story in your way. Everything else is just mirroring.
Some films are just meant for the filmmaker—as acts of expression and self-actualization for the storyteller.
Helen Lewis, a staff writer at The Atlantic, has some tips on writing at her
newsletter:
Don’t save people from themselves (too much). As a writer, you have an ethical responsibility to people you write about: don’t lie about them, don’t set them up, don’t mischaracterise them. But also: don’t impose your values onto them. If you are talking to an adult and they tell you something that makes you uncomfortable—about their private medical history, past addiction, odd sexual fetish—resist the urge to tidy that away.
Until the next,
E.
For some time now, I’ve actually turned on paid subscriptions (for a specific period) for some of you whom I know to be fellow writers or particularly active supporters. I don’t think Substack notifies people of this, so don’t be alarmed if you notice you’re a “paid” subscriber to Movable Worlds but don’t remember having paid anything. You haven’t!