Warning! Proceed with caution.

Hey everyone!

A little introduction about myself – I am Xin from Malaysia, a distance student of this course.

I thought I’d share something light-hearted with you in my first post here. My colleague shared this link on Facebook and I just couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I guess all of us with journalism background could relate to the “warnings”.

Out of the 10 “warnings”, I have to admit that I am guilty of at least three. This is a bit embarrassing, but let’s explore some of them:-

#1 This article contains unsourced, unverified information from Wikipedia.

When we are not sure of something, we always turn to Google. And then it always brings us to Wikipedia, which format and formality seem to have made the information appeared quite reliable. We try to check more sites, but more often than not, most of them have the exact lines as Wikipedia. However, if we are really unsure of something, we’d rather stick to an editor’s advice - “When in doubt, leave it out!”

#2 This article is based on an unverified, anonymous tipoff.

Although we are always asked to double check our facts, sometimes we tend to trust our sources too much. It’s of course better to have more than just one contact in a particular organisation, as I always find “talking to just one more person” very useful. I will end up with some new information for my story.

#3 To ensure future interviews with subject, important questions were not asked.

The fear of losing the contact conquers it all!

#4 This article is basically just a press release, copied and pasted.

Well… what can I say? When we can’t seem to find the right words to describe the restaurant that “brings Italian conviviality and contemporary America together in a casual atmosphere, resulting in the creation of time-honoured recipes with novel flavours”,* a well-written press release comes in very handy! (But honestly, we always try to write as much as we can and only pluck a very few words from the press release.)

*just an example taken from a website of a restaurant

#5 Journalist does not understand the subject they are writing about.

Sometimes I find myself in this dilemma as I work in a section that covers a myriad of stories (local news, fashion shows, food reviews, art exhibitions, assorted events, etc). Once, I had to interview a real estate agent, who was in town to conduct a seminar with the local agents. The industry was totally alien to me and I went back to the newsroom with only a few usable quotes. I wrote a story (and it was published) but whenever I read it again, I remembered the struggle of putting the paragraphs together.

#6 Journalist hiding their own opinions by using phrases like "some people claim".

I like this one! It's normally used in commentaries. Journalists tend to believe that our opinions are the same as the people's... since we are also part of the society, right?

***

Writing this reminds me of the journalism values and ethics I learned in school. Accuracy, credibility, fairness, objectivity, accountability... It has been a long time since I last give serious thought to these values.