Tutorial 8: Investigative Reporting and the Acts of Ethics, Case study on movie 'Never Been Kissed'

Well, as the title can tell, today's topic is about investigative reporting and the acts of ethics, case studying on the movie 'Never Been Kissed' which the lead actress was Drew Barrymore. Well, If you guys didn't know about it, here's a pic of the movie.

This movie talks about a lady, which name was Josie Geller. Josie was a copy editor for a certain newspaper and on one particular day, she was asked to write an article, being undercover, about high school student and to help the parents to be more aware of their children's life. She was asked to go to South Glen South High School and her days there were miserable. To cut the story short, she was awarded as the prom queen, she became famous, she was at the peak of what every youth wanted, being popular. At last, she told her friends about her being a journalist and then later confessed to the literature teacher that she loves him and will wait him at the baseball court for the kiss that she is waiting for.

Well, in the middle of the movie, she was asked to put on a  hidden camera wherever she go and it camera was on her shirt in the form of a shirt pin. So, this is what we are going to talk about today. Investigative reporting and acts of ethics. The discussion is about is investigative reporting  unethical?

For my answer, I could say that it surely depends on the story that one is writing about. If it is about those story on very serious like the current news, what use is there for people to go undercover and investigate deeply back on what they are doing? Just do a normal research and then you will get what you want. There is no need to go till that being undercover. And secondly, being investigative reporting, you will hurt someone in the process. For example, you are trying to get some story about a girl that died in the toilet. You went and investigate about the murderer and the results is that you found another similar case done by the same person on another victim and you went and ask her and made her recall back her bad memory that she is trying to forget. Does that sound ethical? I don't think so.

Being a reporter, we must know where our limit lies. Yes, the people deserve to know the truth but is there a need for people to know every single thing even the bad once where you have to leave your ethics out to get those information? And other than that, we must be ethical of what we does. Know where you ethics lies. Don't over exceed that limit that you set for yourself.

In the movie, they made Josie to wear a camera so that the whole company could know what she is going on and secondly, to give her stories to write. But, being that, is not ethical. The whole company could see her private moments like what is she were flirting with guys to get information, or what if she was in the toilet and the whole company sees all her parts? That is totally unethical. But in a way, the company could monitor her actions so that she could be safe and not be bullied by people around the school.

So for my answer, investigative reports, yes we can have it but make sure that it is ethical and it is under the limit that we set for ourselves.

Tutorial 6: Principal to Interview

In today's post, we are going to talk about principals of interview. In our lesson, we learned about there are 4 principles of interview as like: Research, Rapport, Question and Listening. We will discuss on this four things.

So for research, before every interview, we need to do some homework as like looking the basic information of the interviewee and we have to really do some detailed research on the topics that we are going to talk on. Interviewing is a way for us journalist to get information from. Interviewing is like looking for more additional information for the things that we already had. For example, the one we interview might have a very bad past. So we have to be careful when we are interviewing them by looking through their personal biography and looking at their past. For another example, we wanted to do a piece on a very rich lady who have a good career behind her. So before it we will already have some information so by interviewing, we will get information that is more precise from the lady.

Next up is Rapport. Rapport is said that we as journalist or normal humans should have empathy towards people who we are in communicating with. When we are interviewing someone which is in pain, we should not just blindly ask them about how they are feeling. Of course they will feel sad and bad but we must know that they are suffering in the depth of their heart. For example, MH370 event had been 4 months from now and nothing had been found. And being a reporter, we must change the way of us asking question from "Your family is still missing, how do you feel" to "I'm sorry to hear for your lost. How are you feeling?". The first one is like too straight where people will think of the loved once. But in the second one, they might think of them but they will feel better if they know that you have empathy.

The third one is that Question. Every interview is impossible to go on without a set of question list. Before going to an interview, prepare a set of question based on what you had found out and try and imagine the answer from the people. You will find out a lot of things whether that question will be offending them or not, or you will also find out that that question is open-ended or close-ended. Being in an interview, the question is better to be Open-ended than close-ended as if you asked close-ended question you will not get more detailed answer. There are also the direct question and the intrusive question. Direct question, as like it said, it should be direct. Directly straight to the point. These type of question is frequently ask by news reporter. And lastly is the intrusive question. The intrusive question normally will be asked about the interviewer's private life and their family. Before asking these kind of question, it is our courtesy to ask the interviewer whether it would be off record or not. They might not want it to be posted in the news paper or the article that one wrote.

Lastly, we have the listening. By listening, we do really mean listen and not hear. By hearing, we absorb each and every sound in the surrounding and process it in our brain but by listening, we do it in the sense of that we absorb one particular sound in very direct and very focus way so that we would not leave out anything. So being an interviewee, we must be very proficient on listening. By this, I really do mean on listening. Be listening to each and every sentence, we would not leave out anything in particular. We have to listen to it whether it is boring or not. In any situation, they might speak of grandfather and grandmother stories but what should we do? Just hear and do not listen? No. We must listen to every little particular that they said. Maybe in the grandmother stories that they told you would be your main point you also would not know. Being a journalist is not about good in writing and good and asking and being a smart mouth. We as journalist also have to be a good listener.

So, being an interviewer is not an easy job. Although it is hard but it is worth it.

Tutorial 4: 2 news pegs with only main point

This week, we are going to discuss on two hottest news currently. First, we are going to talk on the phone that XiaoMi developed, Mi 3 and the second, we are going to talk on the panda coming to Malaysia.

The main points of the current hottest smart phone in market are:

• It was created by XiaoMi, a China company.
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 8274AB 2.3GHz processor, Adreno 330 450MHz GPU, 2GB LPDDR3 RAM, and eMMC 4.5 flash memory.
• 5-inch IPS display. Full HD at 16:9.
• 13MP camera with dual-LED flash.
• 8.1mm thin, 145 grams light, and houses an aluminum-magnesium alloy frame, coated with 3 layers of thermal graphite.
• 4.2 KitKat Operating system.

Those are the specs of XiaoMi M3. On my opinion, it is now the current best phone that we could get in the market. It is cheap and it is very powerful as the Samsung Galaxy S5, iPhone 5s, HTC One M8, Google Nexus 5 and many more. It is counted as the cheapest phone and it was as cheap as RM800 and it won't go till like RM 1000. It is indeed a great phone to use and it has a lot of color theme to choose from, like blue, yellow, silver and black and pink and etc. 

Next, the topic that we are going to talk on is, *drumrolls* PANDA!! 

As we all know, panda are all cute and big and huge and yeah, everything you can think of for a bear.
The actual size of a panda is like smaller than a bear but larger than a tiger or lion.

These two was the baby panda that was sent to our country. So the main attraction of these two panda coming are:

• Both the pandas are 8 years old.
• This loan is the representation of Malaysia-China great relationship for 40 years.
• Two experts from China that took care of FuWa and FengYi from their birth will be accompanying them for the duration of their stay.
• In the flight coming to Malaysia, a vet was there to accompany the pandas.
• They both arrived on 20th of May.
• The complex for the Panda costs RM 25 Million.
• FengYi weighted 102 kg and FuWa weighted 120 kg.
• Normal panda size are 1.5 m long and 75cm height when they are crawling.
• They both recieved MM2H visa where they were the first one to receive it and they were the first to receive it.

Well, basically, pandas are cute and they could be very adorable at times. But for those who wanted to meet up with FuWa and FengYi, you have to pay RM 50 for both the entrance fee of the zoo and the admission fee of the panda complex.