It's hard to take an article seriously after it begins, " It was an accusation of porn in the corn that aroused Aaron Landy's scorn." Nor does it become any easier when you learn that the setting for the article is a fake cornfield in the middle of Los Angeles that is called, with apparent earnestness, "Not a Cornfield."
But somewhere in this only-in-L.A. tale about a fake cornfield, an experimental filmmaker and the semantics of what constitutes pornography, reporter Bob Pool throws in one of the best, and least used, tricks of the trade.
He writes:
Nodal — former general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department — denied Landy's assertion."We never accused him of filming pornography. But there were people filming naked people. We had an open policy, but then things started to happen," Nodal said.
But Landy had his high-definition video camera rolling during the confrontation and secretly recorded Nodal.
"You guys are shooting pornography," Nodal says on the tape. "You also cut a crop circle in the middle of the cornfield. You guys have been shooting porn in here. We have a lot of witnesses."
Simple contrast can work wonders. Pool not only gets to show that Nodal is lying, he uses Nodal's own words to do the dirty work for him. It's refreshing in an era when many mainstream publications refuse to call subjects on outright lies that the Los Angeles Times resorts to tricks usually found on the Daily Show.
Somehow, it's the vulgarities of mistrusting subjects that earns readers' trust. A PR person or government official giving a quote to a newspaper may be more likely to focus on the truth and less on fabrication if he knows that his words will (literally) come back to haunt him.
Courtney F. Bal... @ November 18, 2005 - 4:08pm
Brilliant post (and title, by the way). Maybe the juxtaposition of two contrary statements, even though it's so simplistic, is still harder than the go-to "he said, she said" reporting we're used to reading. It seems like sometimes we're too scared of "bias" that we don't piece anything together or come to any conclusions, even minor ones.
I especially love the bit about the lead. Is there no editor who wanted to say, "You may think you're being clever, but it's ridiculous"? The one thing that annoys me more is over-alliteration; I would've gotten an instant migraine from that lead.
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