Readings:
1. Journalism Theory in Practice by Suellen Tapsall & Carolyn Varley
Ch 13
2. Online Newsgathering Research and Reporting for Journalism by Stephen Quinn & Stephen Lamble
Ch 10 Computer-Assisted Research and the law

A picture says a thousand words. So perhaps I open this post with the following picture to summarize the whole topic of presentation for today:

This picture is the comical version of the famously controversial picture of a Sudanese who was waited on by a vulture, by Kevin Carter.


Ethically, one may ask, shouldn't the photographer save the cake? Or in this case, the child? Well, it is of journalism unwritten ethics that journalists should not interfere what's going on around them. Imagine if a journalist goes to a war zone and tries to save every soldier being shot. That is not the responsibility of a journalist. A journalist merely need to gain the information and pass it to the world; that is the ethic.

Another lesson on ethics is that journalists should check their facts and be objective. In other words, we should never judge people, especially when we don't know the real situation. What really went on during the photograph taken by Carter was, the parents of the child were there, taking food from UN feeding center. Right after Carter took the picture, the vulture flew away.

On other note, Kevin Carter should have not killed himself at all. He should have been proud of himself: He opened the eyes of the other half of the world who'd filled with consumerism and commercialism.