Wrong: Haitians in rubbles from BBC gallery

One picture is worth 1,000 words. The cliché says. However, BBC’s selection of pictures about Haiti earthquake seem quite inappropriate.     

BBC news site picture of Haiti earthquake

 

This picture has strong visual impact, isn’t it?  

Click on it or go to BBC website to see it in enlarged size. Look at it very carefully. Now tell me how you feel.  

Don’t you think that BBC is actually ‘playing’ with people’s miserable life, even if just slightly?  

The women with a dust face got her body below chest stuck in ruins, together with another two who were almost unidentifiable, one of whom had his/her head and body in red blood.  

Is it appropriate that BBC published this photo?  

Pictures in other media

BBC didn’t take this photo. It was from AFP.  

In fact, none of the 17 photos in its gallery was credited to BBC. Most of them were from AFP, several from AP and Getty Image, and one from the Red Cross.  

This explains why you can see the same images in other media such as The Times or The Telegraph.  

The Times Haiti story

 

The Telegraph Haiti Story

 

However, neither Times nor Telegraph selected that photo that BBC used. If you go through all the photos, you’ll see they are more reserved than BBC in using photos that feature seriously injured people.  

Who makes the decision?

The answer to this question is simple. It’s the editor on duty who decides which photos get published.  

However, the question might actually not so simple as it looks. Behind the simple ‘go’ or ‘down’ decision is the style, or principle of each media institution.  

BBC saw that picture, so did the Times and the Telegraph, most probably. But they made different choices.  

BBC knew well that some of its photos including the one we talked just now might offend some people, so they put up a warning on the first page saying “This gallery contains pictures some readers might find disturbing”.  

But does that justify its ‘playing with people’s miserable life’?  

I’m not a person who gets easily disturbed, but this picture really makes me feel bad about those Haitians hit by the earthquake, especially how their catastrophic lives were depicted by BBC. 

How NOT to attract traffic to your blog

Log in to your blog. Wait for the statistical figure to show. Fingers crossed—wish Total Views number surprisingly skyrocketed. “What the hell is wrong with people? Why don’t they read what I write?” You wonder.

 

Yong checking his blog view statistics

Almost all rookie bloggers fit into the profile I just described. Don’t feel ashamed if you are one of them, even if you are already a veteran blogger.

It is human nature to be noticed, cared, praised or criticized, and liked or hated. Your blog is part of you. It wants spotlight as well.

Basically, every blog is important to at least 5 people: your father, your mother, your husband/wife, your kid, and of course, yourself.

But you want more people to read what you write up there, make their comments, or just leave a smiling face like :-).

How to generate traffic

So you learn to write online, fighting some old habits of so-called “good writing” in the traditional sense.

Thanks to David and Paul, two funny lecturers who specialize in online journalism, I now have some golden rules for online writing, including blogging.

• Write for Google search engine (SEO).
  Over 40% of all traffic to a site comes from Google search. This doesn’t include those who first know your site through Google but later visit your site by typing the URL or clicking your URL address in their bookmark.
• Key words for headlines
  and less than 60 characters. Jacob Nielson acclaimed BBC News for having the best headlines
• Keep sentences short and simple.
• One idea per paragraph and keep paragraph short.
  Why? Because it’s easier for online readers to scan. (I know there are two ideas in the above line. No need to remind me.)
• Use sub-headings after 5-6 paragraphs.
• Use list or bulletin points.
• Cut, cut, cut and cut again.
  or, shall I say cut just once and cut the other three cuts?

Dailyblogtips gives 30 traffic generation tips. I would suggest Jacob Nielson’s Writing for the web before worrying about the number of your blog visitors.

How NOT to generate traffic

It’s always easier said than done. And persistence requires even stronger mind.

I could have finished piling up what I want to say in a lump within 15-20 minutes, but one hour later, I’m still here writing because I’m trying to follow those golden rules.

Back to the headline of this blog, how not to generate traffic, or how to lose traffic, the answer is very simple: Do not follow any online writing rules.

You can tell I’m kidding, right?

Well, I noticed some habits, or “mistakes” over the past few months that might cause bloggers to lose readers.

• Write about things of not much “value”
  You can write about your own life, but unless you are a celebrity like Opera Winfrey or Brad Pitt, you should not expect people to be interested in your blog.

  Jonathan Morrow from Coypblogger wrote a touching story On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas that best makes clear this point.

• “Force” readers to visit your site
  Many people now read in RSS readers such as Google Reader or Blogline. Some set their feed export to “abstract” or “headline” instead of “full text”.

  What makes you so confident that you write better headlines than BBC News or irresistible first paragraph (with a few more lines, usually considered “abstract”) so that people would click on the feed and go to your site?

  Most probably, they will just never bother checking your feed or simply cancel their subscription of your feed.

• Bolden sub-headings
  Sub-headings not only function as road signs all the way down your post, but also gives tags to Google search.

  If you just bolden the sub-headings, they are actually still body texts put in that <p> tag.

  You have to set them into Heading 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 according to your blog layout. Headline 1 is usually reserved for THE headline. This gives a <h> tag that Google spider catches.The Headline block usually is located in the style tool bar, next to other layout buttons such B (bold), I (italic), U(underline), etc.

• Update blogs irregularly
  “Sorry, I’ve been busy these days so I didn’t update.”People don’t care about your schedule.

  If they come to your site on day 1, and see no new blog, then on day 2, still nothing, then there is a slight chance they might still come on day 3, but if then they still see no updated blog, they might never come back.

  And on day 4, you feel like writing, and you publish 3 blog posts, or 4, or even 5, but sorry, the gone readers are gone. They are not coming back.

All in all, blogging is about quantity, but more about quality;
it’s about talking to yourself, but more about interacting with others;
it’s about following hot topics, but more about offering original idea; and
it’s about finishing assignment for the Online Journalism module, but more about polishing your writing and getting prepared for a journalism career.

Briton executed in China over drugs

A British man convicted of drug smuggling was executed in China today. BBC’s coverage of the story lacks balance, fairness, objectivity and impartiality.

Top story on BBC news front page on 29 Dec

The British man Akmal Shaikh was executed for smuggling 4 kgs of heroin into Urumqi, Xinjiang in the north-west of China.

UK government and Akmal’s families made repeated pleas for clemency and visited him in Urumqi this weekend.

BBC has been following the story heavily in the past few days, and the execution became its top story today.

The headline: good and/or bad

On its news front page, the headline is “China executes Briton over drugs”.

By criteria of headline writing, this is undoubtedly a good one. With just five words, it tells who did what and how and why. It even hinted where and when.

Besides, it uses an active verb. This is where the editor shows off his wisdom.

People who get killed usually become the subject in a headline, e.g. “Man killed in harbour car plunge in Cornwall”, and “Iran protesters killed, including Mousavi’s nephew”. However, the editor obviously wants to put the blame on China.

Let’s compare BBC headline and my headline for this post.

• China executes Briton over drugs
• Briton executed in China over drugs

Is “China” a specific person who did the execution? Which appeals to the British readers more, China or Briton? And does two letters longer really matter here?

Now let’s click to read the story. Oops, the headline changed. Now it reads “British man said to be mentally ill executed in China”. Interesting, hah?

Wait a minute. What is that “said to be”? If you are not sure of something, make sure of it, or don’t talk about it. How can you even put it in a headline?

EU national Vs. Briton

Let’s move on. Here comes the third paragraph:

The execution took place despite repeated calls from his family and the British government for clemency.

This sounds ridiculous to me, well, because of the structure of the sentence, especially the use of that “despite”. UK government and his family called for clemency, so what? Should China let the man go just because some guys made the plea?

The prime minister Gordon Brown also made fun of himself by saying “am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

Okay, you are the almighty PM, so whatever you request, we have to grant. Is that what you mean?

However, this is not the worst part. One paragraph down, the following sentence stands out.

Mr Shaikh is the first EU national to be executed in China in 50 years.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time that BBC used EU national referring to Mr. Akmal Shaikh. What’s the point, please? Is this impartial? What are you trying to “achieve” here, soliciting sympathy from other EU members so that they will join you condemning China? You wish.

Keep journalists code of conduct OUT of mind

Two paragraphs down, BBC brought up the man’s mental illness issue again. Let me give you some key points from the article:

• family said he suffered from bipolar disorder
• They said he had been delusional
• Mr Brown: particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken.

According to Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC World service and Global News Division, “Balance means arranging things in equal or correct proportions to one another. ”

If BBC is indeed balanced, where are the explanations from the Chinese side?

Don’t tell me you can’t get China’s officials to talk. They have explained this a long time ago. Besides, your Chinese correspondent should have told you about the procedure of asking for mental illness verification in court.

If you keep on reading, you’ll see all quotes are against China. Don’t you think this is biased?

The article also quotes legal charity Reprieve’s communication director saying that “he (Akmal) was frankly failed by China and by their legal system”.

An opinionated and false accusation. Can China sue for defamation? The quotation marks doesn’t prevent you from being sued.

Role of media

In the past few days, the Chinese media remained absolutely silent about the story. Equally oddly, the British media showed excessive enthusiasm while the public didn’t appear to be very much interested.

After all, it is a man who committed felony in China and was trialed and sentenced in accordance with China’s laws. It’s a criminal case, as simple as that.

What the UK government and Mr. Shaikh’s family were trying to do was to ask the Chinese government to overrule the court’s decision.

However, aren’t they used to criticise the Chinese government for their intervention into judicial independence?

What do they apply double systems when a British man is involved?

And what role have the British media played? Is it right for them to allocate so much space or air time for the drug smuggler story? Are they acting as the mouthpiece of the British government as they always accuse their Chinese counterparts for doing so?

All in all, can a public service broadcaster really stay independent, willingly or unwillingly?

Update at 10:00 am: The Telegrpaph also puts the story on its front page. Their reporting is much better in terms of following journalistic code of conducts.

Interview: ‘yes’ or ‘no’

A friend called me to speak on BBC Radio. The thought of giving an interview, especially one that would be broadcast live to thousands or even millions of listeners scared the shit out of me. Shall I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

Source: Jason Ralston

I was dreaming something when the call woke me up.

“Yong, what do you think of the Copenhagen Accord? Want to join our live talking tonight at 18:00 to 19:00?”

It was Jessica. She is doing one-week internship in BBC World Service, Chinese Service. She was trying to secure some interviewees for a BBC programme.

We discussed about the topic and I figured out what they wanted:

• opinions on the climate summit from a Chinese;
• how the summit was reported in the Chinese media; and
• what did the general Chinese people say about the outcome.

“Do I have that much information they need?”
“Is my English good enough to go live on BBC radio?”
“What kind of image shall I present about the Chinese media?”
And, “what if I said something wrong?”

Many questions flashed in my mind. I even thought of those people whom I contacted asking for interviews for my TV and radio assignments.

“Did they think about the same things as I had?” I wondered.

“Yes” or “no”

Jessica was waiting for my confirmation on the other side of the phone. There wasn’t much time for me to hesitate.

“Okay, as long as they don’t mind that I am a Chinese journalist.” I told her.

I said ”yes”, for the sake of myself and Jessica.

This would be my first live interview. No matter how scared I might feel, my consciousness told me that I had to do this. If I don’t take the first time, there will never be a second time.

I also thought about Jessica. I could even imagine how much she needed a “yes” answer after making so many calls to secure someone for the interview. Her editor might be whipping her to get things done. (I made myself seem noble, eh?)

How did the interview go?

Well, I couldn’t tell you how the interview was.

It never happened.

From 17:30 until 19:00, I checked my mobile phone 4 or 5 times to make sure it has signal. I thought about the interview and couldn’t focus on anything else.

I looked into the mirror and tried to speak as I was being interviewed. Then I wrote down some key points. And then, I just sat and waited.

After 19:00, my phone haven’t rung at all. At last, I was sure they wouldn’t call.

Why? Possible reasons included:

• mobile phone is never good for live interview
• other interviews went too long and squeezed out my time slot
• my identity as a Chinese journalist might be a concern
• they found someone else who went into their studio (as I was not physically available)

I’m proud of myself

I felt relieved and happy. You might understand why I felt relieved, but why happy?

Well, I was happy because I said “yes” in the first place. I felt proud of myself. I didn’t have to regret that I didn’t have the guts to go live on a BBC English programme.

True, this could be a small piece of cake for you, and some of you might even dream of having such an opportunity.

But for me, it was not. I dared myself, and the go-for-challenges me knocked over the shy me. It was a glorious battle I won.

I might despise myself if I said “no” in the first place, no matter whether the interview went as scheduled or not.

Something I neglected before

In fact, the aborted interview made me think about interview again.

When we approach people asking them to give an interview, do we ever think about their worries or concerns? Have we ever put ourselves in their shoes?

When I did my TV interviews, I contacted people from Harrow council, the NHS primary care trust, a hospital, and many other institutions. Why was it so difficult to get their “yes”? Some even looked frightened when they saw my video camera and tripod. Did I ever think of it, that people might be scared of speaking on TV?

After all, it’s not about what we need, but what they can or are willing to give.

TV talenet show exposes China’s race issue. Or, really?

CNN website published a story about a black Chinese girl causing controversies allegedly due to her skin color, and concluded that racism is a serious problem in China. Is this reporting objective?

Picture from: SMG

Lou Jing, 20 years old, was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and an African-american father. The only difference she has with other Chinese girls is her black skin.

Four months ago, she participated in a TV talent show in Shanghai called “Go Oriental Angel”, and was eliminated before the finale.

At the stage, she said she was raised in a single-parent family, and now wanted to find her father.

Off the show stage, Lou became the center of heated discussion. She was “attacked” on the Internet. Some Chinese netizens even made racial discriminative remarks such as “she shouldn’t have been born” and “get out of China”.

Did she lie?

This is basically the CNN version of the story. But, was it really her skin color that sparked those hostile remarks as CNN claimed?

Let’s hear the other side of the story.

With the help of “human flesh search engine”, some Chinese netizens claimed Lou was lying.

Lou’s mother was married to a Chinese man. When she left work to pursue further study in a Shanghai college, she had an affair with an African-american who also studied there. The man left before Lou was born.

The Chinese man was protective of both Lou and her mother. He said Lou’s black skin was because her mother ate a lot of Chinese herbal medicines when she was pregnant.

For three years, the Chinese man protected “his” family until he could no longer undertake the never-stopped finger-pointing. He gave up his career and left for Japan.

However, Lou said she had never had a father and was raised by her mother single-handedly.

Those who believed she was lying felt it was unfair for the Chinese man who sacrificed so much for three years to bring her up. They started to pour their anger over the web.

Has CNN been objective?

I’m not here to judge which side of the story is true; I can’t prove anything.

But I’m sure that CNN was absolutely wrong to say that it was Lou’s skin color that was the center of the disputes.

Totally disagree. The central issue of the disputes was honesty.

Besides, those racial discriminative remarks were made by just a few. They were not the main voice on the web.

In fact, I had some doubts about CNN’s reporting of this story.

• The story happened in late August and lasted until mid September. Since then, it has subsided. Why did CNN pick it up after three months later?
• Why didn’t CNN mention the real controversies about Lou Jing? For fear of defamation? Then why didn’t CNN ask Lou or her mother to clarify?
• Was it right to say that a few unreasonable people’s remarks stand for what most Chinese people think? Search “Lou Jing” in Chinese in google, there are only less than 600,000 results. If you can read Chinese, you’ll see nearly 80% talked about her story instead of racial problem.

These is nothing wrong to report a single case to address a general issue, but there must be a solid connection between these two; otherwise, it’s like you call a white cloth “black” when all you see is just a black dot on the cloth.

Jounalist’s code of conduct

When we talk about news reporting, there are four rules that journalists have to abide by:

• objectivity
• fairness
• balance
• impartiality

Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC World Service and Global News Division, had an article “Holding on to objectivity” in which he talked about the differences of these four principles.

Sadly, none of them is loyally implemented in the CNN story.

BBC College of Journalism website launched

BBC launched its College of Journalism website on 14 December. From staff journalists to part-time journalists, an era of pan-journalists has finally come.

BBC CoJo Snapshot

The website, also called CoJo, was created three years ago, but its access has been limited to BBC staffs until this Monday. Now, all people in the UK can visit the site.

As CoJo first director Vin Ray says, CoJo is to “design and deliver training and learning for BBC journalists in the UK and around the world.”

However, CoJo is not just for BBC journalists. It suits everyone who is interested in telling their own stories in a journalistic manner.

Why go public?

Martin Moore, Director of The Media Standards Trust, explained the importance of the launch of CoJo website.

CoJo teaches the public about principle of journalism. To put in a way that the general public can better understand, it is about trust, trust in what you publish on the web: bbs, blogs, facebook, youtube, among others.

Working journalists or student journalists who are already familiar with these principles can reflect on their practice using guidance provided by CoJo, nevertheless, they may find the skills part more useful.

For the general public who contributed a big part to the avalanche of information over Internet, CoJo website offers the most substantial online sources for journalistic practice.

What comes next?

Everybody can tell a story. The development of technology has substantially diversified the ways of telling a story.

Many years ago, it was the job of an extremely limited group of people who were called journalists.

The wide application of Internet created hundreds of millions of bloggers. Sometimes it is hard to tell the differences between bloggers and journalists.

Nowadays, anyone who can write, speak or film can be an amateur journalist. They can write blogs, post pictures, upload podcasts, or publish video clips.

Some of their stores were indeed used by the mainstream media.

For journalists, it might be the worst of time as they will be competing with all people to get their stories published or aired; but for the public, it might be the best of times.

Asking tough questions in interview

Ask tough questions; put some pressure on the person you are talking to; bring up some heat; and “bang”, you make a good interview.  Is that really a GOOD interview?

Mike, our radio lecturer, taught us some valuable rules for interview:

• don’t make statement; ask questions;
• make your questions short;
• don’t ask double-barrelled questions;
• be informative naive
• …

Apart from that, he stressed “asking tough questions”, and did a live demo in class by interviewing one of the students. He called it the “bang” moment.

Are interviews really about asking challenging questions?

Who won?

In BBC’s Today program this morning, James Naughtie interviewed Pamela Taylor on the prospect of reduced water bills (click to listen). Pamela is the Chief Executive of Water UK.

At around 02:40, James appeared aggressive, and rudely interrupted Pamela to “question” her. You can even hear him breathing while Pamela was talking. Was he still excited after throwing out a tough question?

Then at around 03:05, he sounded so eager to bring Pamela down and you can almost tell that he was laughing inside.

At 04:43, he tried to convince his listeners that he succeeded in trapping his interviewee by stating the controversy in Pamela’s talking.

Keep on listening, you’ll see that James kept on challenging Pamela all the way till the end of the interview.

What makes a good interview?

Is James’ interview with Pamela a good one?

Not to me, at least. Simple put, I didn’t feel comfortable with the way he treated his interviewee.

Judging from above criteria for good interview, James did a good job, but he appeared to be following the “asking tough questions” rule to an extreme, which made him sound as if he was superior to the person he was talking to.

My reaction to that was “who the hell do you think you are?”

It’s hard to tell what a good interview is, but it’s easy to tell what makes a bad interview–an interview that makes your listeners uncomfortable.

An art

Some classmates said they didn’t like the “aggressive style” either.

I would put it this way:

• asking tough questions is okay, but they shouldn’t dominate the interview;
• do not use them at will because they DO NOT make you look or sound smarter;
• when you do ask tough questions, please be polite. Remember you are not a policeman or policewoman, neither your interviewee a suspect or prisoner.

Asking questions is an art, and it takes time to be an artist.

A headline that doesn’t make sense

While reading the Times story “Opera Winfrey says goodbye to television talk show after 25 years“, I accidentally noticed another headline which says “Focus on the big issues, not bananas”.

I was so curious that I decided to click through to find out what it is about. Here it is:

Focus on the big issues, not the bananas
Open elections, greater democracy, energy and aid should head the list for Europe’s new leaders

Alas, after 20 words, I figured out what this article is about when I see “Europe’s new leaders”.

I don’t know if there is any cultural connotations in the headline. If not, I have to say this is really a bad headline no matter how “fit” it appears to those who finish reading the article.

The intro is also terrible.  Subject is too long, and verb is too far away from the subject. Even though it comes in S-V-O format, it fails to deliver the message effectively.

I understand this is a comment article, not a piece of news, but still, it could have been better, at least in terms of headline and intro line.

BBC is said to have the best intro for its stories. I searched BBC site and here’s some of its headlines and intros:

• Is the new EU President a good choice?
  EU leaders have chosen the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman van Rompuy, as their new President. Is he the best person for the job?

• The Record: Europe
  After weeks of horse-trading and meetings in smoke-filled rooms, the top EU jobs have been appointed.

• EU foreign head dismisses critics
  One of the two newly appointed figures to the European Union’s top jobs has hit back at criticism that she does not have enough experience for the post.

PS: When I typed the headline of the Opera Winfrey story, I typed “said”, and then I realized it is “says”. This reminded me of what my TV Journalism teacher Richard said over a week ago: “Try to use the present tense to engage your audience” (not the exact words, but the meaning is there. Thanks, Richard. )

Learn from BBC news

On Wednesday 28 October, an explosion in a crowded market in Peshawar in Pakistan killed over 90 people and injured more. BBC journalist Orla Guerin reported the story, and below is what I observed and learned from this video clip.

1. The warning text at the beginning served two purposes: one was to alert people about coming “graphic images”, and the other  was to, most probably unintentionally, lure people to keep on watching. It is human’s nature to be curious about uncommon phenomena.
2. The journalist didn’t waste words on elaborating the images. Images themselves told the story, such as ruins, smoke, flames, injured people, shouting, running, and so on.
   The first line “Chaos and carnage returned to Peshawa, shops ablaze and lives destroyed.” set the best footage for the chaotic scene. The journalist didn’t describe what was there in the images; instead, she provided information that images couldn’t tell, e.g. location of the explosion, a burning shop that had already been ruined.
3. Sentences were loosely connected. That pause left time for images and sound that dragged audiences into the story by providing on-site experiences.
4. “Locals tried to find survivors, then this.”–destroyed buildings collapsed. This was the power of images. In newspaper, all you could say was “As locals tried to find survivors, destroyed buildings suddenly collapsed, roaring dust chasing people who sprinted for lives.” Well, newspaper journalists undoubtedly could tell the scene a thousand times better than I did, but they still couldn’t defeat the live images. This was  a big moment. Lucky for the journalist, though disastrous for the suffering people.
5. When it came to Hillary’s press conference, it was obviously post-production work. Even the size of the images were different. I guess Hillary’s images were from news agencies.
6. No interviews. People were busying saving lives. The journalist could have someone before the camera to express their sadness and anger, but that would be inappropriate. Maybe she did, maybe not. I don’t know. This was an issue of ethics.
7. Piece-to-camera on the top of a fire truck. That’s the privilege you get when you work for an influential media organization.
8. Altogether there were about 18 shots. They came in various formats: fixed camera images (11, symbolised with – ), tilt down(2, + ), pan(2, & ), and track (3, * ). These different formats, together with various time allocated for every shot, provided a comfortable watching experience. Using above stated symbols, the clip was presented in the following way: – – – + – & * – – + & – – * * – – –
9. Hillary’s soundbite was 15 seconds long, and the journalist’s ptc 20 seconds. Typical standard.
10. The journalist used plain words, even for verbs. Except for “shops ablaze and lives destroyed” in the first line and “then this” before the collapse took place, there were not many “listening-to-me” words, as Wynford said in his book English for journalists. The journalist did say “coffins were rushed in…” but the images didn’t show that. Check for yourselves. There were places that could be improved. For example, “A rickshaw brought this man to hospital.” In fact, the rickshaw left the second when the man got off, which showed how urgent things were going on out there.

This is a great piece. There are so much for me to learn. I need time to watch news, but I need more time to study them in order to learn better.

God, please give me more time.