Journalist ethnic: How word is taken out of context?

Source: Youtube NTDde

In 2009, China, a professor from Beijing University’s word angered the society and many people started to protest outside Beijing University, but this may be not his fault but the journalist’s.

Sundongdong said at least 99% of China’s petitioners are mentally ill

Sun Dongdong event

His word(above) became many main media and website’s headline just over night. The magazine who did the interview were sold out in almost every vendor. On internet, this headline generated a huge discussion, most people reacted with fury.

The media I work for decided to interview him again. The chief editor thought that this event was very wired, it was not convincing enough, there must be something behind it. We wanted to hear his explanation.

So I  called him. His colleague answered the phone and said he was in a meeting. After I explained the reason we want to interview him, his colleague gave me a bitter laugh and said :”His word was taken out of context“. He added,”We were very angry and wanted to sue the newspaper, but the university management decided not to draw any further attention from the media and the public. “

He said the university’s public relation department hope people can gradually forget about it over time. As a result, Sun Dongdong would not accept any interview from any media this period.

Sun’s colleague did not go into detail due to the school’s PR policy. Considering Sun is Peking University’s one of the most popular law professor among students, and most respected professional of mental illness in legal context industry, I doubt this story is as simple as reported.

Personal experience as an interviewee

I always playing the role of asking people questions. My first experience of an interviewee was on Online Journalism class when David asked the class to write a profile of the people sit beside you.

I did not feel comfortable during the interview. I could easily feel from her questions that the “journalist” had already had her own prejudgment.

But the worst part is that my word is taken out of context, and some part was just not true at all. For example, I told her my boyfriend did not like the idea of long distant relationship. Then she made a quick judgement “ she let her boyfriend defer a year of study”, even after I said that I did not do it solely for him, I also think one year work experience will be helpful too.

She used part of my word to serve her pre-judgement.

Jessica is doing interview for BBC Chinese Service

Journalism crisis

This is a very big word to be used here. I don’t want to be exaggerating, but just worried if things going on like this, people will less and less trust journalist in the future and it will be harder and harder to convince regular people agree to take an interviews any more.

This is not just a ridiculous worries, I did feel it is harder to convince experts from China Social Science Academy to take our interviews after Sun Dongdong’s event. When I tried to ask for a scholar’s email address from the secretary, she said “who is still willing to take an interview from a journalist.”

Her words really shocked me and made me think for a long time. Journalists do need to consider more things than interviewees, like how to draw the attention of the public, how to get opinions from different sides, etc. But most of all, and most importantly: be factual, do not take word out of context.