On a less fun note I want to criticise some of the newspapers I write for. There is an APPALING article today across a number of Independent Newspapers titles, including The Star and Cape Times, about Josh Broombergberg. Instead of focusing on the brilliance of his matric results, ONE sentence is devoted to his results, and the rest is quite a long article simply regurgitating the controversy of members of the SA national schools debate team wearing keffiyehs at the World Champs. Worse, the story robs him of his 9 distinctions, saying he got 8, an inaccuracy no doubt in part reflecting the disinterest in the good news, and simply an attempt to sell copies based on dated news. Why not restrict yourself to ONE line about the controversy (to contextualise why you chose profiling him today), and construct the rest of the piece as a simple, and inspirational, narration of youth academic excellence? it would still be accurate, and worthy of getting papers sold, but without lazily focusing on the past controversy in a sort of cut-and-paste job. The worst bits though are twofold: 1) a header that screams Controversial scarf boy excels with 8 distinctions--- am I the only one who finds the tag controversial scarf boy rather belittling? Is that now a tag that must follow any report on Josh? 2) The accompanying picture shows Sam Musker also - a fellow debate team member - but could not bother to tell us that he too got 9 distinctions (including being placed in the top 1% in 6 of his subjects, like Josh). Again, that must count as evidence of a reporter - Anna Cox - not caring for the matric results-angle as much as reviving her previous angles when she wrote about them. Why? On this occasion, my editor Kevin Ritchie and Group Executive Editor Karima Brown we dropped the journalistic ball. In the view of your columnist. We are Independent :)
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:57:13 +0000
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