Discussion: S-Town
First up: Quiz
Next: Let’s talk about the ethical considerations of the podcast.
What parts of the podcast could be considered a violation, in your opinion? Did Brian Reed get sufficient consent to justify publishing all of this? What were his justifications for talking about the one thing John asked him to keep off the record?
The podcast is actually being sued.
Let’s map out the podcast in terms of storytelling. What were some of the themes that it ended up exploring?
What were some of the subplots and how were they resolved?
What has happened to Tyler since the podcast aired?
What does Brian Reed say about all this?
After John died, how did you decide which aspects of his life that he didn’t explicitly mention to you to include in the story? I’m thinking specifically of the episode on his romantic life, Chapter VI, and the ending episode, when you explain his and Tyler’s ritual of “church.” How did you make those decisions?
We thought about them carefully. We think about every piece of sensitive information carefully, and what its importance is to the story and to people’s understanding of someone else’s experience, and of the structures in a place like Bibb County. There are lots and lots that I learned in the reporting that I didn’t put in the story because we felt that what it added to the story wasn’t worth either the sensitive nature of it, or maybe it touched someone who was still alive, and we didn’t include it for that reason.
But also I don’t believe that when a reporter is doing a story about someone who has died, that they can only include elements that the person consented to when they were alive. I don’t believe that’s an ethical problem, and there’s a whole world of journalism about people who have passed away. The whole enterprise of that journalism is to learn more about [those people] than we understand from when they were alive. My absolute favorite book of the last few years is The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, which is written by [Peace’s] college roommate. His roommate is explaining his drug-dealing activities, he’s explaining some of the more unsavory sides of Robert’s life, and that’s the whole point — to understand what happened to this man, and how he got into the situation he got into.
Yes, I’ve seen some reaction that confuses me a little bit. But I don’t think you have to have talked about everything about someone who’s dead with them. We’d be losing out on some really important stories if that were the case. So yeah: It’s important to be sensitive, and it’s important to always be evaluating what we’re doing, I completely agree with that, and I think that people can disagree with the decisions that reporters make, for sure. But we’re very careful and thoughtful in what we included and what we didn’t — and there’s a lot we didn’t.
Upcoming Dates:
Next week: Both classes will be production days. Podcast episode #1 due Wednesday, Nov. 20 at midnight.
Scripts for episode 2 due Monday, Dec. 4. We will do an edit session that day as usual.
Podcast episode #2 due Wednesday, December 11, last day of class.