Speaker: David Fanning
Session: The Narrator's Voice: Finding the Story in TV Documenary
Dec. 1, 2001, 9:45-11:00 p.m.

By Ellen Sung

Dear Colleagues,

There aren’t many sessions at the conference that focus on narratives in broadcast journalism, so I was particularly interested in seeing David Fanning’s talk about documentary narratives.

I wasn’t familiar with his name, but certainly have seen his work. For the last 18 years, he has been senior executive producer of PBS’ Frontline.

Like so many others, I admire Frontline documentaries for how deeply they dig into a subject, and how tightly they weave the story that emerges. But just as astonishing is the reach of the series. In clips during our session, we saw the Whitewater scandal retold, electricity deregulation explained, lives of al-Qaida terrorists retraced from childhood.

Every one of those stories begins as a journey, a search, Fanning says. The tools at your disposal are not the compass or the map; interviews, recreations, careful casting of strong characters, and a keen director’s eye lead you to finally building a narrative arc.

But it’s hard work. Too many television news segments focus on finding compelling pictures, and then writing words to match them, Fanning said. The 90-second story about the House budget scandal might have two strong soundbytes, with some narration to link them together while B-quality images flicker in the background.

His advice: Never write for the pictures. Write for the story.

And here’s where his presentation really grabbed me. Story, he said, lies at the very heart of who we are. We need stories -- narratives with a beginning, middle, and end -- because we live in what his wife calls "existential vertigo." We are always in the present, always in the middle of the story, always trying to ground ourselves in what came before and to figure out what will happen next.

It’s a universal need, the wellspring for long, rich traditions of storytelling. In Western culture, it is enduringly recorded in the saga of Odysseus, the man who roamed the world trying to get home, doomed to ten years in his own existential vertigo.

In my own writing, I often have trouble sorting out the beginnings and choosing the ends from what seems like an endless pile of middles in my reporter’s notebook. Perhaps I should heed what the Frontline producers and writers know: The journey’s the thing, and the greatest stories give readers wings on which to depart and a safe place to land.

Ellen Sung
Repoter, Poynter.org

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