Hantu Laut
In the world of journalism ignorance is not bliss it's idiocy.The less you know the more idiotic you are.
Lazy reporters, journalists or whatever they may be called, aplenty, in this country.Like the Utusan Malaysia reporter who thought "ultra vires" uttered by Karpal Singh were words insulting the Sultan of Perak.
My English teacher would have recoiled in sheer horror.He would have said "If you don't know, ask! If you are 'bodoh sombong' than that's your funeral".
If you are shy to ask, today there are other alternative in this technological age, there are wealth of information on the Internet and it's free. All you have to do is a click of the mouse and presto! You are there.
But than, "ultra vires" if one needs to get to the bottom of it's meaning is not even English, it's Latin, but has become very English by its broad usage, particularly by the legal fraternity.
Like the student who refused to do his homework many of these purveyors of news are just too bloody lazy to get the facts of the matter right.They are the typical "makan gaji" type that took no pride in their work.
I remember when my family had a tragedy and my father and my grandparents perished in a fire that consumed my father's house Bernama reported that I was an adopted son and studying in Singapore when I am of the same flesh and blood, already married with three children, the only son and running a multi-million dollar trading and shipping business in Singapore at that time.I chose to ignore the report and consider the reporter was just too bloody lazy to do his work professionally.
Till today, I wondered who was the person that he enquired the information from.
Now, I understand why they are called reporters.Their job is just to report without worrying about the authenticity of the information.
Than you get some too smart for their own good.A video (below) shows a TV3 reporter asking Wan Azizah whether Anwar Ibrahim owned an Omega watch and she replied in the affirmative and what come next was a scatterbrain and sheer stupidity, she asked "cuba kasi tengok" asking Wan Azizah to show her the watch there and then.
Real smart ass.
Below is another stupid reporter who hassled Anwar over the same Omega watch which most people knew has not been confirmed to belong to Anwar, asking Anwar if he has the watch why has he not surrendered it to the police.Did the police asked Anwar for the watch?
Is she a rookie, or was coached by her bosses to ask those questions or just plain stupid? The police have not asked Anwar to produce the watch.They need not have to as no crime has been committed.Infidelity is not a crime, it is just something society frown upon.
"I want to show how UMNO operate" insinuated Anwar of the awfully stupid question.
Reporter bodoh UMNO yang kena.
Utusan,TV3 and all GLC media network it's about time you recruit real journalists not some half-past-six reporters incapable of asking sensible questions.
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Friday, May 6, 2011
Friday, August 14, 2009
Inadequate Journalistic Aptitude:A Lesson To Be Learnt
Hantu Laut
You probably have read the story about Utusan reporter Mohd Nizam Mohd Yatin who told the court that he thought the phrase 'ultra vires' means 'to insult'.He was under the impression that Karpal Singh used the word to insult the Sultan of Perak.He appeared in court as prosecution's witness in Karpal's sedition case.
Karpal's defence lawyer Jagdeep Singh may be expecting too much to expect that Mohd Nizam, a Malay reporter, should understand the meaning of this legal jargon derived from Latin.The term is mainly used in legal works.Ultra vires literally mean 'beyond the powers' which in simpler form would mean 'doing something beyond your legal power or authority' which is the opposite of 'intra vires' which means 'within the powers' which is not as much in use as ultra vires, which can be found in most dictionaries.
I do not know the educational background of Mohd Nizam but to be fair to him it is not his educational background that is at fault here because he is not alone, many English educated persons are just as clueless as he is about the meaning of the word.This is what Mark MacCormak says in his book 'What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School'.You only learn about it after you left school, college or university, whichever the case may be.
Was Mohd Nizam wrong for not knowing the meaning of the word? Yes and no.There is a thing called common sense.You are a reporter and confronted with a word which is Greek to you, what would you do? Naturally, unless you are lazy, which may be the case here, you would want to find out the meaning before you submit your report to your boss.I believe all reporters have access to the Internet and it would have saved Nizam the embarrassment if he had been a bit more diligent, a click of his mouse would take him only a few seconds to get the meaning of the word.
Nizam was not wrong for not knowing it before he came across the word but what was wrong was him groping in the dark, for his presumption of the meaning and for his lack of curiosity after he came across the word in the course of his work.Curiosity does not kill the cat here.As Mahatma Ghandi had said "Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy"
I would not like to question the standard of journalism in this country but there have been many cases where journalists made boo-boos of what they wrote because they are just too lazy to learn about the subject and the jargon associated with it.
A while ago I read an article in a local newspaper where it was reported that a state-linked companies made over RM400 million in profit exporting rubber and rubber products.I know the company personally and know for sure they couldn't have made that much profit. I have seen it happened many times and in different newspaper where reporters mistook 'turnover' or 'gross sales' as profit.Whether it is the reporter to be blamed or the editor who sent the wrong reporter to cover the story, never edit the content, or the editor himself is ignorant.
If you are a business reporter you are expected to know the jargon associated with the industry, otherwise, you would be just like a parrot that repeats what it hears and not know what it means.Just like, I came across many years ago 'amortization of assets' which a reporter thought as enhancing the assets value when it actually mean reducing the assets value through depreciation. You can either amortise your assets or your debts.There are other forms of amortizations which I will not go into details.
To be honest when I first started using the Internet, I didn't know the difference between an Internet and Intranet, I thought they were one and the same.Curiosity and the need to know helped me to find out that they are not the same.Intranet is a private computer network used by employees within an organisation or companies.
The search for knowledge is like the receding horizon, it's infinite, you never reached your destination.
One can write a text book on ineptitude of reporters and bad journalism if one wishes to but that should be left for another day.
You probably have read the story about Utusan reporter Mohd Nizam Mohd Yatin who told the court that he thought the phrase 'ultra vires' means 'to insult'.He was under the impression that Karpal Singh used the word to insult the Sultan of Perak.He appeared in court as prosecution's witness in Karpal's sedition case.
Karpal's defence lawyer Jagdeep Singh may be expecting too much to expect that Mohd Nizam, a Malay reporter, should understand the meaning of this legal jargon derived from Latin.The term is mainly used in legal works.Ultra vires literally mean 'beyond the powers' which in simpler form would mean 'doing something beyond your legal power or authority' which is the opposite of 'intra vires' which means 'within the powers' which is not as much in use as ultra vires, which can be found in most dictionaries.
I do not know the educational background of Mohd Nizam but to be fair to him it is not his educational background that is at fault here because he is not alone, many English educated persons are just as clueless as he is about the meaning of the word.This is what Mark MacCormak says in his book 'What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School'.You only learn about it after you left school, college or university, whichever the case may be.
Was Mohd Nizam wrong for not knowing the meaning of the word? Yes and no.There is a thing called common sense.You are a reporter and confronted with a word which is Greek to you, what would you do? Naturally, unless you are lazy, which may be the case here, you would want to find out the meaning before you submit your report to your boss.I believe all reporters have access to the Internet and it would have saved Nizam the embarrassment if he had been a bit more diligent, a click of his mouse would take him only a few seconds to get the meaning of the word.
Nizam was not wrong for not knowing it before he came across the word but what was wrong was him groping in the dark, for his presumption of the meaning and for his lack of curiosity after he came across the word in the course of his work.Curiosity does not kill the cat here.As Mahatma Ghandi had said "Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy"
I would not like to question the standard of journalism in this country but there have been many cases where journalists made boo-boos of what they wrote because they are just too lazy to learn about the subject and the jargon associated with it.
A while ago I read an article in a local newspaper where it was reported that a state-linked companies made over RM400 million in profit exporting rubber and rubber products.I know the company personally and know for sure they couldn't have made that much profit. I have seen it happened many times and in different newspaper where reporters mistook 'turnover' or 'gross sales' as profit.Whether it is the reporter to be blamed or the editor who sent the wrong reporter to cover the story, never edit the content, or the editor himself is ignorant.
If you are a business reporter you are expected to know the jargon associated with the industry, otherwise, you would be just like a parrot that repeats what it hears and not know what it means.Just like, I came across many years ago 'amortization of assets' which a reporter thought as enhancing the assets value when it actually mean reducing the assets value through depreciation. You can either amortise your assets or your debts.There are other forms of amortizations which I will not go into details.
To be honest when I first started using the Internet, I didn't know the difference between an Internet and Intranet, I thought they were one and the same.Curiosity and the need to know helped me to find out that they are not the same.Intranet is a private computer network used by employees within an organisation or companies.
The search for knowledge is like the receding horizon, it's infinite, you never reached your destination.
One can write a text book on ineptitude of reporters and bad journalism if one wishes to but that should be left for another day.
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