Dear Miss Wilding,
Do journalists with your background have any ethical obligation to report fairly or are you at liberty to permit your personal bias and prejudices to influence your writings? If the latter, should not your editors disclose that fact to your readers? And lastly, for the record, what are your biases and prejudices?
Answer
There is no writer or journalist alive whose writing is uninfluenced by their personal biases and prejudices. If the mainstream press discloses the agendas of their editors and owners and writers it might be preferable to the current situation. Maybe something like this: "The following article is about climate change. This newspaper is owned by someone who profits greatly from the oil industry. Please read accordingly."
My own biases and prejudices are as follows:
Against arms dealers and manufacturers, for people getting to live in peace and children growing up with all limbs attached. Against pollution of the environment, for my son growing up in a safe world with clean air and water and a wide variety of plant and animal life. For social justice, for people having decent wages and working conditions, for co-operatives and everyone having enough to eat and a safe place to live. You get the picture.
Name
Gretchen
- Denmark
Profession
Caricaturist
Question
Are you optimistic or pessimistic that Muslims in the future will be afforded the liberty of being able to read and to freely express their thoughts without the fear of being killed by their co-religionists?
Answer
I don't know. In all honesty I don't know. It's a very valid question. My own focus, being more or less white-British, tends to be more on the UK government's actions and the damage it does abroad. But a good friend in Iraq was murdered by people who disapproved of his drama work with children of all sects in Iraq and it is something that needs addressing - all kinds of fascism have to be addressed, but am I optimistic? I don't know.
Name
Rasha
-
Profession
Question
Salam Jo,
What are doing these days?
Answer
Training as a barrister and being mum to a toddler and step mum to 2 small boys. I went to Turkey recently on a human rights delegation looking into F-Type isolation prisons - the reports will be on www.jowilding.net when I get round to putting them there.
Name
Salimah
-
Profession
Question
Hoping you're fine, Jo.
Can you please explain why is there a hidden war on information? why Journalists are being targeted?
Answer
Hi Salimah. I touched on this earlier in another answer. It's down to ownership of the media in large part, in that anyone who is rich enough to own a newspaper or broadcaster is a powerful person who therefore wants to maintain the status quo. Politicians, of course, want to control information and in Iraq it was particularly visible in the way that soldiers were forbidden to talk to anyone and the press conferences were the only way of getting information, and thebriefings were given in language deliberately phrased to control perception, eg, liberation. It'sbecause the people who have the position to control information are also the ones with an interest in maintaining things as they are and in keeping people ignorant in order to do that.
Name
Minnihahashallah
-
Profession
Question
Which newspaper is best if I want to be journalist like you?
Answer
Unfortunately most newspapers are pretty poor. This is because they are almost all owned by people who already have loads of money and don't want to change the way things are very much. In the UK, there's the Independent newspaper, which is good, but even that won't always publish radical things. That's why I always write on the web, then see if anyone picks up on it. Needless to say, it doesn't pay very well! I should say, I'm not really a journalist, I'm actually training as a lawyer now. Sorry, I know that isn't very helpful, but the fact is that most newspapers just won't publish anything radical.
Name
Heba
- Egypt
Profession
Question
For you who is the good Journalist ?
Answer
Robert Fisk and John Pilger, for continuously writing honest journalism from places which the authorities would rather hide.
Martha Gellhorn, the late, for compassionate writing from places of conflict.
Riverbend and Salam Pax for their blogs from Iraq.
Rageh Omar is also very good.
Apologies for a very UKK-centric list.
Name
Hous bin Fard'een
- Bahrain
Profession
Investment Caterer
Question
My beloved wife wants to learn how much education is required before becoming a famous journalist such as yourself, or can anyone do it without knowing anything? Thank you.
Answer
The only thing you need to know is how to write, and to have some empathy with people and be interested in their stories. I must say though, I'm not a famous journalist, just a blogger who was in the right place at the right time. To be a proper journalist for a media organization you might need qualifications but the most important thing is to write well.
Name
Dina
- France
Profession
Question
who is your favorite journalist, newspaper and Magazine ? and how do you measure if a publication is good or not ?
Answer
New Internationalist is my favorite magazine. The Independent, in the UK, is my favorite newspaper. Journalists, see the last answer. Oh, and Christian Parenti, in the US, is great.
For me, it's a question of whether the publication puts out things which challenge the status quo and those in power or not and whether the writing is good, evocative and questioning.
Name
Jack
-
Profession
Question
Can you speak about your experience in Iraq?
Answer
There's so much to say, I couldn't say very much here, but it's all out there.
See www.jowilding.net and also the book "Don't Shoot the Clowns" and the documentary "A Letter to the Prime Minister" (which won the Al-Jazeera gold award for best international documentary) both from www.newint.org
Name
Hilary Toadstool
- New Zealand (Aotearoa)
Profession
Lecturer on Female Anatomy
Question
Just wondering, what kinds of fruits did you toss at Tony Blair; and is that part of becoming a world famous journalist?
Answer
Tangerine, and no, just a step along the hourney.
Name
Muslimah
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Profession
Question
Peace Jo Wilding!
I have visited your website/blogs and I really think your experience is so tremendously wonderful and rich that very few of us can claim to be likewise.
My question is: how to develop your self as a good writer and reporter?
Thank you!
Answer
One of my best tips is to read your writing aloud. Then you hear it as another person would. Make sure you're not repeating the same words too often and that the rhythm is right, the right length of sentences and that what you mean is clear. A good thing to try is writing short things and not using a particular word, like 'it', 'the', 'very','she', etc. It's good practice in writing style.
As far as reporting, I think the key is to listen to people, because everyone has a story to tell. Look at the body language as well, and then try to understand the context as well, what else is going on, why is something happening, what does it mean for the people concerned.
And I always remember reading this quotation from Amy Goodman in the US, which is that the responsibility of the journalist is to go where the silence is - i.e., where people are suffering and no one is reporting it.
Name
Germy
- Denmark
Profession
Question
How do you evaluate the performance of islamonline as a Muslim media organization?
Answer
To be honest I'm probably the wrong person to ask - I'm not a muslim myself and I don't have much time for watching / reading media at the moment. But IslamOnline has always been really good about publishing things I've written and putting out things that other outlets won't.
