2012 will be the end of the world

Now I come to some kind of believing that

2012 will be the end of the world

December 11, 2009

I had never believed the nonsense like 2012 will be the end of the world until I opened today’s daily mail.

It says that scientists have discovered a way to remove the fearful memory. They found that when recalling back, people have a short period of time to let their brains “rewrite” the unpleasant part to a better one.

It is predicted that deleting fear memories would achieve success in labs soon and come into practice in the near future. If human being removed all painful memories, such as slave trade, Nazi war, Nanjing Massacre…then the end of the world would be around the corner.



Actually, painful memories are more likely to push us forward than happy ones. In every disaster there is a golden lesson that we can learn.



Human being removed the memory of nature disaster caused by over pollution. They forgot the painful memory of losing families. The tragedy would happen again, even worse.



Not every scientific experiment can be performed. It, on the one hand, can head the history forward. On the other hand, it has the power to end it.


original article on Nature

source:

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/rewriting_fearful_memories_by_bringing_them_back_to_mind.php

A sentence makes me thinking

I am reading the NUJ’s code of conduct which has set out the main principles of British and Irish journalism since 1936 when a line of words jump into my eyes:
……

A good will, I think.

I am a Chinese journalist-to-be. Maybe in the context of China, it will be even harder to realise this. However, I never believe it is possible to come true here, in UK.

As a human being, nobody can avoid being influenced by his environment. As a media organization, so far there has not been any can stand out claiming that they are fully free from pressures of both the market place and the government.

The outside world is so powerful that everyone has to adjust himself to fit in. The human nature of not being isolated from the majority has taken an important role to ruin the journalists’ objectiveness.



According to psychological studies, people tend to select information to form their own “fact”. The individual opinion has already shaped the “fact”. A thousand of individuals will have a thousand “facts” based on their knowledge, education background, family etc.

I believe that bias is one of the things that we can never get rid of no matter how hard you try. It is such kind of human nature that makes a person a person- no doubt a journalist is a person. Everyone behaves in a way that believes is right.

At this point I can not believe that differences among fact and opinion can be identified.

Still the NUJ puts this norm to the code of conduct is not losing its value. In terms of media I hope every journalist respects the truth and has the capability to differentiate the fact and opinion. In this way we will not go too far from the truth.

code of conduct:
http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=174

      

The importance and qualities of the good investigative journalist

The importance of the good investigative journalist，especially in China, is to reveal the abuse of power in public services and the harm done to individuals in our society.

 Good investigative journalists use the media to call on more people to join together, thus finding a solution for the better. Or with their help, justice can finally come to those who are treated unfairly earlier.

They discover something wrong first, then investigate it and expose it in press or broadcasting. When the problem comes into public attention by the media, the government will be pushed to put efforts to solve it.

In fact, compared with economic growth, there are more important issues that need to be addressed, such as violation of human rights, government corruption, social injustice, etc. Only relying on the government itself can not tackle all of the developing problems. In addition, NGOs in China are not well developed.

At this moment, investigative journalists become an important power to contribute to a citizen society.

Investigative journalism demands different qualities from the reporter than other types of journalism.

First good investigative journalists should have the capability of evaluating potential investigative stories, knowing what to investigate. Investigative reporting is expensive in terms of time and resources after all.

Good investigative journalists also should be able to handle the dilemma of anonymous sources.

On the one hand, relying on anonymous sources is risky especially when journalists only have one anonymous source. On the other hand, sometimes breaking news is inside the very one anonymous source. When good investigative journalists “source” the information from the anonymous, they should have the capability to tell how reliable the source is.

It is also an important quality of good investigative journalists that they should have the capability of protecting themselves.

In some cases, investigations are dangerous tasks. An investigative report may involve an immense petrol corporation or a powerful local governor. They will hinder investigations by threats or violence.

In addition, given the context of China, there might be restrictions from the central government on such negative reports. Good investigative journalists should be able to find a clever angle to report such story.

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A good beginning of being a journalist (2nd edition work)

Ady has been a journalist in his native Indonesia for four years. We spent a good time talking about life as a journalist for nearly two hours at lunchtime. Ady told me his most embarrassing interview moment when he had been a journalist for just one month.

He sat in front of me, holding a mug of water and he, began his story.” I became a journalist in July 2005 and was assigned my first interview in August 2005. You will never ever guess what happened during my first interview.”


His first interviewee was the army governor of Jakarta, a tough man with a bad temper and, at the time, running a temperature. Ady stopped the governor as he was leaving a ceremonial event. Following exactly what his senior editor had told him, Ady asked Jakarta:” does it matter if people think you are a pro-status quo?” At the very moment, Jakarta replied no words but gave him a slap in front of all the journalists and guests- Ady did not tell me whether it was painful or not because obviously that was not the point. Embarrassment was. Almost at the same time, all the other journalists and guests there stepped back in great astonishment. The body guard of Jakarta soon came up to Ady and said:” Please don’t mind. He is ill. Please don’t mind.”

“I am not angry.”Ady said,” it is understandable since he is sick.”

The embarrassing moment did not finish then. The whole procedure was imortalised by a television station camera and shown later on in the evening. When saying these, he neatened his scarf and shook his head slightly.  

"That is how I began my journalism career." Ady said with a gentle smile.


“Wow, that’s a really spectacular start to your journalistic career.” I laughed, “I am sorry to hear that story. Such an awful thing is not supposed to be your first interview experience.”

Ady interrupted me waving his hand, “No, no, actually I learnt from this very interview.” He drank some water and explained,” you know, I should have done some research myself rather than reated every question that my editor had given me. If I had done that, I would have known his political stand and his personality. Maybe the interview would have ended differently”

With this beginning, Ady was subsequently able to tackle quite a few un-expected interview moments. He found a way to mature: learn by your mistakes. So in this way, this slap  was worth a thousand lessons in Ady’s journalism career. 

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