The news really depends on the process of the program

Author: Dou Fengchang (Professor and Senior Journalist at the School of Journalism of Fudan University)

Source: "Young Reporter", No. 14, 2022

"The United States Today" issued a statement on June 16 stating that after internal inspection, a reporter of the reporter Gabriera Miranda had serious news fraud. "The United States Today" said the newspaper conducted a verification of Miranda's reports after receiving external reports, and found false behaviors such as fake persons such as fake persons, citing interviewees, and fictional interviewees. The newspaper has removed 23 related reports on the newspaper website, and before that, Miranda had resigned from the newspaper.

It is not uncommon for reporters to fabricate fake news in the United States. For example, the news fraud scandal also occurred in "American today" in 2004. At that time, the reporter Kelly, a reporter who was shortlisted for Pulitzer, publicly apologized and resigned for fraud. Kelly was an international journalist of the newspaper and reported major international news such as the Gulf War. In 2003, the "New York Times" reporter Blair was found to fabricate the news facts in a large number of exclusive news, and this incident even caused the New York Times executive to resign.

"Today's United States" is a newspaper distributed for the United States. Although the newspaper is not a traditional "big newspaper" in the United States, because of the large circulation, it has a certain influence in all parts of the United States. Essence

In the Internet era, fake news has become a very common phenomenon, and China and foreign countries can not be able to outside. The recent "Huawei and Chen Chunhua" incident is also an example. Huawei issued a statement saying that there are more than 10,000 exaggerated articles and videos of Professor Chen Chunhua's interpretation and comment on the Internet, which is basically "false information". According to preliminary verification, these articles and videos are mostly "play" and "interpretation" of an article written by Professor Chen Chunhua about Huawei. Life ten, ten lives, hundreds of life, the current false news spread so quickly.

Back to the case of "American Today", what I want to emphasize here is not the result of counterfeiting, but the process and method of counterfeiting. This is the biggest warning significance of this incident.

The statement of "American Today" said: "Some objects quoted in the report of Miranda are not reported by the institutions, and they are suspected of being fabricated. The object is Zhang Guan Li Dai. "

Everyone note that this statement says that there are problems with the source of reporters, some of which are Zhang Guanli and some are fabricated. Generally speaking, there are problems with the source and reports that cannot be simply drawn between the false. For example, a traffic accident occurred on the street. False, but the traffic accident is real.

However, according to "American" today, even if the traffic accident exists objectively, because the source of false information is cited in the report, the news of this "result is true" must be identified as "false news" because the interview process exists in the interview process. For counterfeiting, the reporter did not interview "Citizen A", but fabricated "Citizen A" in the report, and "false procedures" caused "false news".

This kind of concept comes from a wider concept of "procedure justice". The so -called "poisonous tree poison fruit", if the program has flaws or even illegal law, even if the result is in line with people's expectations, it will be considered improper. From the perspective of news and writing, this is actually a higher requirement for the real news. The truth of the news not only means that the facts reported are accurate, but also requires the procedures for the interview to be proper and accurate. The two are indispensable.

However, in reality interviews, we often find that many reporters pay more attention to the "true results" and do not pay enough attention to the process of the interview. Especially under the Internet conditions, the interviews can be easily completed through the Internet and telephone. Miss Li's "virtual" interview object. The results written through such an interview may be real, but the interview process is defective or even false. According to strict journalism, it can be judged that such manuscripts can be classified as false news categories.

In fact, whether in the West or the East, the use of anonymous sources carefully is the clear requirements of various media on the reporters, but there will always be problems in practice. This reporter in "American Today" has caused fake news incidents that have not obeyed these requirements in their own manuscripts. This reminds us that professional journalists must strictly ask ourselves.

Professional journalists are unlike a major feature of self -media writers, which are "professional". This requires that the interviews and writing adhere to the higher and stricter standards, and write a manuscript that is more trustworthy. Not only is the result real, but there are reliable verified interview procedures for guarantee. Otherwise, what is the difference between a professional journalist and the "spray" on the Internet?

Reference format for this article:

Dou Fengchang. News really depends on the true program [J]. Young reporter, 2022 (14): 127.

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