Comments on: A is for abattoir; Z is for ZULU: All in the Handbook of Journalism

By: jane bush

jane bush — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:35:02 +0000

Some good stuff to read… enjoyed your post, thanks..

By: poulo

poulo — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:21:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvxZpVB5W j4

By: Poonam Singh

Poonam Singh — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:35:36 +0000

This is great stuff. I am not a journlist, but find it really helpful in communication per say. Thank you.

By: Raul M. Rodriguez

Raul M. Rodriguez — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:39:00 +0000

This may fall into your ethical debate, albiet it is more topical. My main concern is to challenge what I see as a deliberate effort on the part of the WHO to obfuscate relative data that they were providing up until july 16th, then decided that the general public is not entitled to know just how many people are being effected by H1N1 flu pandemic.
Apparently the gravity of this epidemic is being played down intentionally, or the News organizations which you represent are a sleep at the wheel.
The WHO is supposed to the ultimate source of information , why take away the statistics that we were getting? My premise is that they really don’t want people to know just how bad it is really going to get. You as journalist should be outraged. This is not ehtical, look at what the numbers represent. Up unto July 16th, the 1st 100,000 confrimations of H1N1 flu had been documented. The fiqures represented depicted a mortality rate of approximately .48%, that is in the first wave of the Flu epidemic, which from historical data we know that there are three waves. If we take the mortallity of the 1st wave and apply this to the general population , in the U.S. alone if the flu were to run its course throughout the population the death rate would be 1.5 million, as opposed to the average death rate per yr of 36,000.The second wave which is going to hit in the fall & winter should be predictably worse( per research done with the Spanish Flu epedemic with this strain is a direct decentant of) Hello is any body out there!, this is like Katrina, anybody with some walking around sense knew what was coming, and sat on their ass’s and did absolutely bumpcus. If this isn’t something to get real about, you had better dop the math and get with it. This is not spin time , this is about doing something right. You are now officially put on record to service the public you are supposed to serve. Do something.

By: Sharon McEachern

Sharon McEachern — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:42:47 +0000

Say, Dean —

For the record “zulu” has a variety of meanings; however, the one to which you referred to as “a term used by Western military forces to mean GMT” I think actually means times measured in Coordinated Universal Time, a successor to Greenwhich Mean Time (GMT). It’s a time standard that is not affected by time zones or seasons.

I suppose the editors of your Reuters style guide believe you will never report on a story involving the Zulus — the really tall people of South Africa. Why is that? Surely something news worthy just might occur involving the 10 to 11 million people whom are Zulu.

By: Natalia Kim

Natalia Kim — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:57:00 +0000

Great step forward for transparency and to improve the work both of journalists and PR’s! I believe this will help everybody, both English-writing and others…

By: Jan George Frajkor

Jan George Frajkor — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:54:13 +0000

The handbook idea is a great one, and making it online publicly is an even greater one. I speak as a former news agency, newspaper, radio and television reporter, and retired j-school professor. It is time we brought concepts such as attribution, transparency, objectivity and factuality back to journalism.
good luck. give us more.

By: Dean Wright

Dean Wright — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:25:54 +0000

A quick update: The PDF function has been restored and is available on the main page of the handbook. And thanks to all who have taken the time to comment.

By: Anon

Anon — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:14:35 +0000

Journalist terms (A cynic’s collection):

Balanced- Whatever bias the editor choose to include in the article.

Transparent- Perfectly understandable to anyone who already agrees with the presented view.

War Crime- Anything Israel does. Even when it seems to comply with UN laws.

Reputable Sources- Whatever sources we choose to base our article on, but do not feel the need to disclose.

Correction- An apology for the fact that you obviously must have misunderstood our article.

Terrorist- An objective definition for anyone who deliberately directs military attacks at civilians, for the purpose of killing civilians. But as many of our readers may support terrorists, we should pretend the term is too subjective to use.

Lie- Something that can always be included in an article, as long as it is quoted or paraphrased from another person, and can not be said to be the reporter’s own assertion.

Facts- Something you must never falsify, but should always imply. Like a bombed UN hospital.

Integrity- The overt excuse for one’s indignant outrage, when one’s credibility is brought into question.

Truth- Any belief or opinion that has been repeated so often in blogs, that it is now accepted at face value as a proven fact, and hence no longer requires supporting evidence when asserted in debate.

By: De

De — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:05:46 +0000

Thanks!