Pinocchio

One of my favorite dramas of all time is called Pinocchio. It’s pretty old (came out in 2014) and is somewhat of a classic to people who watch K-dramas.

The show is about television reporters. The two main leads, Lee Jong-suk and Park Shin-hye, play childhood friends who grow up in the countryside. Park’s character (In-ha) has a condition called “Pinnochio’s Syndrome” which causes her to hiccup every time she lies. In the universe, it’s considered somewhat of a disability, so she often gets made fun of and is only friends with Lee’s character (Dal-po), who is the kid in class who doesn’t try on purpose and is labelled as a problem child.

K-dramas are honestly complicated, so let me skip ahead. In-ha dreams of becoming a reporter because her mom, who left their family, is a reporter that prioritized her career over her children. She becomes the first “Pinnochio” reporter in Korea who can’t lie to the TV viewers. Dal-po wants to be a reporter because he was a victim of careless reporting that caused the general public to persecute his family. He wants to be righteous, as opposed to other reporters, who he perceives to be in it for fame, money, or politics. He joins the competitor’s news network.

Truthfully, I often look back to this drama when I’m conflicted about the job of reporters. What is “right” and what is “wrong” to report about? The characters often broadcast live; how does presentation and framing affect the way people interpret the story and your intentions?

There are a few scenes that I consider brilliant in this drama. I’ll just share one I love. The topic is: “Which news should come first?” Dal-po is with his team at a restaurant, and they’re discussing what to broadcast as the main story for the next evening. The whole team seems to be in agreement that the answer is “the news people want to hear.” So, Dal-po tells his sunbae (older colleague) that he has good news and bad news, and asks which one he wants to hear first. The sunbae says good news, so Dal-po complies and informs him that he got tickets for a K-pop concert with all the hottest stars. The guy gets so pumped that he nearly forgets that there’s bad news. Dal-po tells him the bad news: he (the sunbae) has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. All of a sudden, the guy is devastated and demanding why Dal-po didn’t tell him sooner that he was dying. Dal-po responds, “Why? Cancer isn’t what people want to hear about. The concert is, so it should come first.”

The moral of the story is obvious. News you need to hear comes before news you want to hear. Maybe we want to hear the exciting stuff, but we need to hear the important stuff. We deserve to know it. Even if we don’t want it, even if it makes us upset, we have to know it.

I’m not the most righteous person to exist. So maybe my concept of “what people need to know” isn’t what you’d agree with. Maybe you think I’m childish for citing a television show, but now you know how I made my decisions (even before this week) and what influences my ethics.

People are just the culmination of their experiences, and TV is based on real life. When I decided (in October) that last week we would publish a full issue related to mental health, I had made up my mind that this topic, these stories, were what people needed to know. Despite it being hard and scary and different from the normal, I believed, and still believe, all of the stories which people were so courageous to write were worth sharing and more important than the weekly news last week.

If we could not meet your expectations, all I can say (since last week was already printed) is that I am genuinely sorry to let you down. All of my staff really tried to do our best work with only good intentions, but sometimes reporters do make mistakes. By nature, we have to take risks, and we always learn from those choices. Although you trust us to be perfect and omniscient and to have all the answers, we aren’t and we don’t.

The Stute is always published on Friday, whether or not we are ready. If I can be honest, last week our team was in total disarray up until 15 minutes AFTER our deadline, debating about how much we should be censoring. We submitted 30 minutes late and then due to technical difficulties with the publisher didn’t actually finish until 4 a.m. I didn’t even want to wake up after that night, but you just have to move forward.

People always just expect to have the paper in their hands on Friday mornings. They don’t see the week-long or month-long journey that is figuring out our shit internally, collecting tips, balancing censorship and criticism. They see us from their limited perspective—without knowing what it’s like to do this job—and carelessly say things that aren’t true about us to all their friends. The same way we don’t know anything about you, you don’t know anything about us.

I don’t think we did a bad thing by trying. When we were asked to write about these topics, we could not sit still. We felt obligated to do something, do anything. But again, everyone has a different sense of justice and set of morals. I think, “If not the media, who else will?” You might think differently, and it’s okay. It’s just life.

We are not a faceless entity. We are made up of students just like you. In general, I would encourage anyone who has any issues with our organization to reach out to us to have a conversation. Don’t contact me if you want to just sit me down and call me a horrible person to my face with one-sided evidence. We always want to hear real feedback about our work, positive or negative. Even article suggestions are great because we don’t know about everything that people need to know. Only with your help can we actually get better and closer to reaching our purpose of serving the Stevens community.