Factors impacting on objectivity in news journalism

ISBN-13: 9783838350127 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 72 str.

Gai Thurbil Yat

Opis

This study will discuss objectivity also in reference to the problems that journalists face when they cover news stories. It may be that journalists may have problems searching for stories not because they do not embrace journalistic principles of fairness, clarity and objectivity, but because of the way in which facts are presented to them by news sources. There have been some cases whereby media audiences have wrongly been made to think that journalists are biased in their coverage. For example, the 2003 Iraq invasion by US-led forces, where correspondents were made to practice embedded journalism is a good example of how circumstances could force a journalist to succumb to soldiers demands of keeping their war causalities away from their cameras. It is worth noting, however, that being biased for a journalist in such a war situation could be circumstantial in the sense that an American journalist covering a story in Iraqis capital, Baghdad, would be regarded as a spy by Iraqis troops. Likewise, an Iraqi journalist chasing stories in the coalition forces camps in Iraqis capital would be treated as a traitor by the Iraqi people.

O autorze

Gai Thurbil was born on 21st March, 1973 in Malakal, Upper Nile, South Sudan. He joined Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and earned a Master of Arts in Media Studies. Now he works in the administration at the University of Leeds, where he has been pursuing his Doctoral research.