Reflection on Courthouse Visit

If I were a journalist I would not like to do court or crime reporting.  I do not think that I would like to do court or crime reporting because the overall atmosphere would not be very pleasant for most cases.  I would not enjoy sitting in a courtroom all of the time, taking notes on a murder or rape case because after hearing about such events it would start to mess with you.  I could not see anyone enjoying this type of journalism because of all the horrid and sinister things that you would be hearing about most of the time.

I do believe that it would be challenging to be objective when reporting news about a case.  In many, if not all cases, it would be difficult not to side against the person responsible for the crime.  I would find it hard only to report what happened and not my opinions because would have plenty. The people who commit many of these crimes are evil, despicable people and I would definitely want to voice my opinion on them.

Overall, I did enjoy my experience in the courtroom.  The case we listened to was very interesting and it was also interesting to find out how a court case is actually looks like in real life.  There were some parts of the bail hearing that I found were very boring and dragged out, but the case in general was engaging.  During the hearing I felt bad for the police officer being questioned because he was trying to do the best he could talking about the incident, but the lawyers were asking him questions he wasn't sure of because he wasn't given all of the facts.  Also, I didn't feel bad for the woman who committed the crime because what she did was very stupid.

While there are many professions involved with the court system, none of them really interest me.  I did for the most part enjoy the hearing, but I would not want to actually be involved with the case or any other cases.  I would not want to have to sit through that all of the time because after so long it would get extremely repetitive and I would not enjoy the stress involved with any of those professions.

Caught in Lies

I have never considered that the news I have read/heard/watch was fabricated, at least from a well known or popular news provider.  I have, however, heard before of news stories with incorrect details because many times reporters do not have all of the information concerning what they are writing about. The stories are never fully incorrect though and only one small detail was incorrect.  I have never considered many news stories to be fabricated because the whole purpose of news is to provide the public with accurate and true facts about a particular story.  When a news story is fabricated then we are not getting the degree of news we are expecting to receive and it is more of a story than it is a news story.

I was surprised after reading the two articles because I didn't realize that credible news papers such as the Washington Post and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal would publish incorrect or factitious news stories such as the ones in the article.  I never would have expected a journalist who worked for a newspaper such as these to fabricate news simply to get a story out. I could have expected less credible companies to publish stories such as these, but it is truly surprising form a company who seems to be so trustworthy.

Yes, I do agree with Jack Shafer's assertion concerning liars in the field of journalism.  I am sure that there are many journalist out there who do not have the skills required to do that job and they would have an easier time making something up than taking the time and effort to get actual information.  Journalism is a fast paced and stressful career and stories are expected to be written and printed in a short period of time.  If someone did not have that proper abilities expected of a journalist then fabricating a part or an entire story would be that easiest way, but not correct way, to gt out a story on time.

I do believe that colleges and universities should be doing a better job of graduating journalism students who can handle the responsibility and pressure of being a journalist.  Many students who are graduating and going into a career of journalism would not be fully prepared for how stressful being a journalist is and because of that would take many shortcut throughout their career.  I am sure that many of the fabricated and incorrect stories circulating today are from students who were not fully prepared during schooling  for the career and are making up stories and adding incorrect information simply to meet deadlines and produce an interesting story.  This is the case even though most consumers want correct information form the news they read.

Yes, I believe that a newspaper ombudsman helps when issues of ethics arise in a news article.  They would help because they put into light that a journalist has made an error or made up a story and this helps to make sure that unethical journalist are seen for who they really are.  As well it is important that someone responds to reader complaints so that the public's voice is heard about factitious stories.