Monday, November 29, 2010 @ 12:39 AM
Question 7: Should journalists be free from constraints and law in order to ensure that their articles are objective and fair?
Journalist is profession for broadcast or publication in mass media, such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the internet. Reporters are one type of journalist. Reporters find sources for their works, their reports can be rather spoken or written, and they are often expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve public good.(Wikipedia.org,2010) Journalist has rights and freedom to report and make announcement of the news but there will definitely be some constrain for the journalist to report the news.
In most of the country, there is some news that was constrained by the government. As refer to 2010 World Press Freedom Index, Malaysia has dropped 10 places, which is from ranked 131 dropping into 141, the lowest in 9 years. The index involved a total of 178 countries. (MalaysiaToday.com,2010) The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by reporters without borders based upon the organization’s assessment of their press freedom records. It reflects the degree of freedom journalists and news organizations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the state to respect and ensure respect for this freedom. (hartsBin.com, 2010) This shown that the freedom of journalist in Malaysia has been constrained by government. Federal government has attributed several measures to suppress media voice.
In my point of view, I think that journalist should not be free from constrain and law. This is to ensure that the articles that reported by them are objectively and fair. Journalist should have responsible on what has been written by them. If their reports are found out that is untruth, they might be punish by law. This is the obligation of journalist.
Journalist should not be free from constrain and law due to it might cause violation of personal privacy. Personal privacy is important to the society, people may not feel secure if their privacy is been exposed. If there is not law that constrain journalist in reporting news, they might violation of other’s people privacy in order to get the information that they want. This is unfair to the person and it might hurt the feeling of the people if their personal information is been disclosure.
Journalist should not be free from constrain and law due to the objectively and fair on reporting news. Journalist should not bias, stereotype or add their own opinion in their news. Somehow, there are some of the people that willing to pay the journalist to report some untrue news or asking them to edit the contents of the news. In this way, journalist also would not deliberately write out something that is untruth of a person on news. Nevertheless, the articles still to be trusted due to the legal restriction on journalist.
As conclusion, journalist should have freedom in reporting news, but they should not be free from constrain and law. This is to protect the society and to control the journalist in order to reporting something that is truth. This is the obligation of journalist. There are constraints and laws occur in every obligation itself. As responsible to their obligation, they need to follow the constrains and laws in their industry.
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