i have a bone to pick with Journalism... whatever that word means the days.
I mean... i HATE journalism... Maybe i don't hate it, actually i don't. I hate it only because of the high demands and burn out rate of the field. besides that i think journalism is a very very exciting field to be in. The times when i have done reporting for Sundial has been very very challenging yet very rewarding in some sense. It's the only field that really, you're paid to learn about stuff. Paid to be a pain in the @$$ to your sources. Paid to talk to people. It's wonderful because if you really love reporting and believe in the social responsibility of the media, I think it's a wonderful role to play in help shaping/changing/helping society. It's wonderful.
Sure you have to specialize in knowing a field very thoroughly (such as either politics, business, technology, medics, travel, music, movies, cooking, etc) or at least be VERY WELL READ in EVERYTHING. And of course, you MUST have the PASSION (which i lack, therefore i am not going to practice journalism because my passion only comes when i actually feel the fun of reporting... often only AFTER the story is done).
But reflect that idealism with the reality of the situation is that news reporting these days is just shit.
why i say so is because of this.
1) Media ownership. Everything is owned, run and controlled by big businesses here in America. Editors don't let you run or even REPORT on stories that do not stand too well with advertizers and that's the plain truth. Bring this into the realm of social responsibility. You can't report on sweat shops, the unhealthy food industry, mcdonalds if anything because the advertisers are gonna come back and bite you in the ass, threaten to withdraw money through advertising for your paper. Social responsibility is dead in news reporting.
2) I read this post on someone else's blog about how NST (yeah in Malaysia) interviewed him and then in the end misquoted him in the news article. This is NST for goodness sake you know! I got my ass fried by some stupid disability department for writing that some dude said that disable people have to "fit in with society" when he DID say that, u know. It's shit! And here you have NST blatantly skewing and misquoting facts and figures from a source!
You know the lack of integrity and the blant practice of "tidak apa attitude" of malaysian "journalism" (i can't even bring myself to use that word for the shit in our papers) is EXACTLY the reason why i don't want to practice journalism in Malaysia. i mean, if you're not gonna get the quotes right or the facts right, what's the point of writing it and reporting it in the first place???
you know, maybe the whole integrity shit that they taught in journalism classes are just idealistic guidelines meant to instill some sort of deluded pride in aspiring reporters.
I mean and don't even get me started about malaysian MAGAZINES....
man... I am SURE there are great Malaysian reporters out there, don't get me wrong, but i just don't get it that if i see such passion in these PPS (project petaling street Malaysian blogsphere thing) bloggers that seems to posses the essense of qualities that makes a good journalist, the what's with this shit that we see in papers then??? Running news that are not newsworthy, being politically biased, not bothering to run fact checks, etc, and everybody seems to think that this is okay!
I wonder which is worse sometimes, the sensationalism of American news reporting or the downright disregard for facts in Malaysian reporting... or are they both as shitty..
It's stuff like that that's making people NOT trust the media. i'm always caught between a love and hate for journalism because i know how totally socially responsible journalists can be (i've seen and i know the people) and yet hate it for all the shit it churns out day by day.
There are people who think "wow a journalist" or "look dude, look at me, i'm so great cause i'm a journalist." Then there are people, like my good friend Ching Mun *wink* *wink* when i told her i was a journalism student she was like "oooo good lah, u can lie so well,"
it's just paradoxical!!!
Journalism has gotten itself a shit name these days. Yet i don't blame the people for having a mistrust in the media because Journalism IS shit these days.
go figure.
I'm gonna go become a fucking teacher.
wuahahahahaha. hm.
Friday, June 17, 2005
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