Good reporters get the facts, report the news and remain objective

When you're a journalist you're going to come across news and information that you don't necessarily agree with or might have a personal reason for disliking.

It's obvious! You might work as a journalist but you're still human and just like me, you have your own standards, likes and dislikes etc.

But as a reporter you've got to learn to separate your own feelings and opinions from the facts whether you agree with what you're reporting or not.

Just like I'm writing this blog to give you informed facts about being a journalist, it's your job to give your news audience the facts about what's happening in their locality or around the world if you land a job in the national press.

For instance, you might not favour a particular political party or religion or think a decision not to convict a defendant is wrong, but it’s not your job to tell news audiences what you think unless it is clearly written or aired as comment.

As a reporter you're a messenger of the news. The middle person between the outside world and the people wanting to know what's going on in it.

It's important that you remain objective and simply gather and report the news facts accurately and give a balanced and fair account in your story.

Now as I'm writing this I'm mindful that you might be thinking: "Hang on a minute! I know of plenty of press that don't report the news like that!"

And you'd be right! But you are not the press, you're a reporter. Media bias is not the same thing as remaining objective as a news reporter and reporting the facts about a subject(s).

NOTE: Being objective as a reporter should not to be confused with the workings of the mass media where the news is often influenced or compromised by affairs outside the media such as politics and/or media ownership (more on that in a later post which I'll link from here when I've written it).

In a nutshell, you've not to allow your personal feelings or opinions to rule when you're reporting the news, whether you agree or not. Being impartial is key to being a good reporter.

I remember years ago covering the murder case of a 20-something-year-old woman and being astounded when the jury convicted the defendant based on the evidence presented in court.

But it wasn't my job to report: "Jane Willis thinks the jury was wrong to convict....blah, blah, blah" for a front page news story. I simply had to report the facts of the court hearing, the verdict and include quotes from the lawyers on both sides.

Of course, a news report might still be accurate and both sides of the debate reported fairly but the angle of the story, choice of images, wording and headline (including sub headlines) can lead news audiences down the path of persuasive inference.

But that brings us right back to objective reporting in journalism based on the whole mass media debate (see above in blue) which I personally find really interesting but prefer to do on a separate post(s) so as not to cause mass confusion!