Truth and Objectivity

Truth in journalism is a major factor in the reputation of a newspaper or basically news in general. The following video features veteran journalist, Pamela Varkony, who was an embedded journalist in Afghanistan. She talks about women in the journalism industry and emphasizes on truth in journalism.

It could be said that the public deserve to know the facts and what is going on in the world around them. The truth may hurt but perhaps with the half truth weaved into the reports by public relations practitioners, it may be rather difficult to distinguish the truth from the partial-truth.

The role of public relations practitioners have slowly overcome the role of journalism with PR practitioners inserting media releases into newspapers. But who is to say what is the truth and what it not. There are conflicting viewpoints in what could be the truth and what could not be in the sense that part of the truth are inserted into the media releases.

In Singapore, there has been an uproar in the citizen's forum, known as STOMP, due to a PR campaign which features a bear digging in the bins at a bus stop near the airport. The footage of the bear was caught on camera by a boy who happened to film the incident with his mobile phone. Of course, the bear was a fake, there was a man in the bear costume. This campaign was created by Phillips, an electronics company. The company was then slapped with a $1,000 fine for being a public nuisance. The story could be seen here, MAN IN BEAR COSTUME.

The truth can be seen to be further emphasized by the advertisements that are recently broadcasted in the Australian television channels. Advertisements are now shown with captions saying that opinions are the actors' own in the commercials. Perhaps the truth would be better for everybody.