Week 7 - Public Interest vs Public Prurience

The presentation topic opened up quite a discussion in the tutorial session. Where do we draw the line between public interest and privacy rights?

I believe that everyone deserves the same amount of privacy due to them - unless they personally vetoed it. Personalities, from showbiz celebrities to politicians and right now, sports athletes, are still the same as us normal lot despite their tremendously publicized ability - human. Don't they deserve the same rights to privacy both in weal and woe?

Unfortunately, this debate is only existent due to the element that killed the cat. Curiosity (or as most Singaporeans will call it, kaypoh-ness) is essentially what spurs the papers/paparazzi on to get as much news as possible. Afterall, if they don't sell their stuff, who's gonna pump the moolah in?

With that said, if the papers were to be ethically responsibly and choose not to go down the route of the paparazzi, there won't be a big demand for news of such a genre. Coming from a sports (fanatic) background, I've seen how the media has destroyed matches, tournaments and even the careers of professional players with their incessant focus on a scandal - and that is just not right. Sports personalities are only extraordinarily-talented individuals who chose to pursue their dream, not to be plunged into a Hollywood-like world.

Week 6 - Journalism and its negotiation of the online, blogosphere and social media

Social media is running rampant amongst, errm, society these days. Made all the more accessible through a huge smartphone demographic around the world, social media has managed to find its way up to the top as a competitor to mainstream media outlets.

With journalism looking to embrace social media these days, it is clear that social media has a huge role to play in the future not just in allowing the common folk to become virtual farmers or mob bosses but also to contribute to journalism by being in the right place at the right time.

This photo, taken by Janis Krum back in January 2009, was the first documentation of the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River on the 19th of January 2009. Posting it on Twitter through the photo-uploading service TwitPic (URL: http://twitpic.com/135xa), Krums' main intention was to notify his friends about this and about his attempt to go rescue the stricken passengers. But little did he know that this photo will end up being on the frontpage of many major newspapers and used on many television networks for its news programme.

The above-mentioned incident showcased one attribute that is probably the gamebreaker for social media to be around for a long, long time - speed. Journalists aren't superheroes or deities so the chances of them predicting a tragedy and being there to cover it is close to ziltch (then again, I don't think any of them will want to predict one anyway). As such, normal citizens like you and I can play a huge role in journalism by just being there, coincidentally or psychically.

Afterall, journalism is defined in the Merriam-Webster dicitonary as a form of writing that appeals to public interest.