Endoh’s Dungeon

The media coverage of China’s earthquake has been fantastic, and I feel it’s even better than what we have seen from CNN on September 11th attack. Countless journalists were quickly scattered all over the affected area, bringing us the latest news and updates in all dimensions. The local media coverage is so extensive that I have not seen anything as close to the Chinese media by far.

Being quick, is one of the important characteristics of being a journalist. Sniffing out news that will keep us gripped to our chairs is definitely not an easy task. Imagine you have 101 news leads pertaining to the same incident, which should you report first? Maybe for some occasions, you may wonder what to report.

Here’s the puzzling part, where do we draw the line between ethical and unethical journalism?

Phoenix Chinese Channel (Channel 50) is the one I keep myself updated with regards to China’s earthquake. Almost every hour, you would see various reports from on-site conditions to international aids that is flooding into China. While I have no issues with most of these reports, I was actually quite shocked to see victims still pinned under buildings being interviewed by journalists. Yes, you are right. They’re in pretty bad shape even though they are still alive.

Til date, I have caught 4 different footages of journalists “shoving” a microphone in the face of a victim, and the camera just went on rolling. I am not sure which company these journalists work for though. One of the most disturbing interviews I have seen was the interview of this little girl whose legs were already crushed. There she was, laying from within the rumble awaiting for help while going through the interview. The immediate question that struck me was, what’s the rationale behind this interview and is it the right time to conduct an interview?

Hundreds of artistes are led by Jackie Chan in a recording to motivate the rescue workers and encourage the victims. Andy Lau has also re-written the lyrics of a song for the artistes within one hour. Millions of dollars and aids are pouring into China. International rescue agencies are also fighting against time to pull out as many survivors as possible. The death figure kept rising and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

And the journalist… interviewing a kid whom she can see clearly has lost her legs definitely?

If you’re a journalist, would you interview such a victim? Or would you prefer to place the priority on alerting the rescue workers, and interview much later after the rescue is done? Since bloggers often like to call themselves “citizen journalists”, do you think it’s ethically right to do this?

I am sure there are many other viable targets to interview which can bring across the same impact, instead of this little girl.