“The average person doesn’t see it. It’s your job to see it,” longtime investigative reporter Don Ray told high school journalists in a presentation at Bakersfield College.
Ray, also a veteran producer, author and lecturer, came Thursday morning to give his journalistic insight to the students, part of the system of the world that “(journalists) have to learn.”
“People don’t check stuff,” Ray said. According to Ray, in high school he finished a term paper using nonexistent books in his bibliography. The result was the second-highest grade in the class and the realization that “teachers don’t check stuff.”
Students laughed as Ray explained his resolution to generate one nonexistent book by Stewart Hunter.
Part of learning the system of journalism was to use “J.D.L.R.,” which stands for “Just Doesn’t Look Right.” Ray said that when something seems out of place or awkward, journalists have the option of reporting using four types of truths. The first three involve the truths about what others say; the fourth is what really happened.
“It starts with J.D.L.R.,” Ray said.
Ray said that journalists write the first draft of history, and that “lately it has been a horrible rough draft,” simply because journalists do not seek the fourth truth.
Ray fought in the Vietnam War, which, he said, was caused by reporters writing the same way people felt – angry at the Vietnamese. The journalists did not see the real truth until years later.
In his closing comments, Ray told the high school journalists to “look for things that don’t look right, and (to) stand up for it.” Students taking notes and taking photos of Ray stopped.
“If you don’t, it may be your family that, like me, will have to go to a foreign country to fight a war and come back embarrassed because you went to it,” he said.