Clearly, there is no journalism ethics question here. This entertainment reporter just plain messed up. Badly.
Still, we can learn from a situation like this.
What are the takeaways? How do we ensure that nothing like this ever happens again? How should the journalist have responded once Samuel L. Jackson began his takedown?
7 years ago
8 comments:
Wow. This may the most disappointing thing I've seen in quite some time. A general rule of thumb is to prep questions and possibly run them by someone, if this guy prepped followed that procedure, there's no way all the people in his job were stupid enough to let that slide.
If they all were too stupid to know Lawrence Fishburne apart from Samuel L. Jackson (They don't even look like each other a little bit) then you should re-evaluate the demographics of your workplace.
What more can you take away from this, but to hope in your career you are more precise then to have this happen to you? I don't think his respond to Samuel L. Jackson was completely professional, but then again how could it have been when Jackson was so unprofessional himself? He basically slaughtered him after his mistake. And really how can we ever ensure this wont ever happen again? This reporter can try a lot harder now that he's made such a crappy mistake to pay more attention and take more initiative to make sure he knows what he's talking about, so that this doesn't happen to him individually again. But in the world or journalism aren't these things bound to happen?
Are mistakes like this bound to happen? My gosh, I really hope not.
I mean, accidents occur. But the anchor seemed absolutely stunned when he inquired about the wrong commercial. He was genuinely clueless. So, he was either unprepared for the interview or given incorrect information.
Regardless of what exactly happened, he seemed an unreliable source of information and that can have lasting ramifications. If his information is blatantly wrong, no one will believe anything he says. And that would deem him irrelevant.
- George
(the teacher who knows that Samuel L. Jackson's wallet is the one that says Bad Mother F**ker on it)
I think that like with most (if not all) journalists, his team prepared what he was going to discuss - and someone messed up badly. However, even though others usually script the news reports, it is a journalist's duty to still research those topics; not only to verify accuracy, but also to bring personal ideas/thoughts to the report so they're not just standing up there looking like this guy - an IDIOT. People make mistakes; however as a media informer, it is also his job to be a media consumer, therefore he should have seen the commercial himself and recognized who was in it. Viewers should no longer find him credible because he exposed himself for a fraud. If I were him, I would never show my face on that station, or television at all, again - due to embarrassment.
Hitting yourself in the face, and admitting that someone else could do your job, and saying "how dumb am I?" might be things to avoid as a journalist. By compromising his own integrity, this journalist opened the door for Samuel L. to go off like that. Admit the mistake, and then lead that admission into a relevant question in one turn of speaking. Shut the door and open a window, so maybe that kind of mistake won't stink to high heaven next time.
Oh man, this video made me cringe. It's obvious that more thorough prepping is in order, but the the reporter really went downhill when he said that someone else could easily do his job and called himself dumb. Of course, he was probably frantic at the moment and couldn't come up with something else to say, but he could have salvaged the situation at least a little bit with different remarks after the mix-up occurred.
Wow! Honestly, the reporter should just take the reprove at this point. The damage is already done, he should just let Samuel L. Jackson finish with his remarks. To try to alleviate the situation is not helping the journalist, it's putting him in a more awkward position. Sure, he is right for apologizing but to try and get back to the real story at hand is kind of pointless. You can tell Jackson is not pleased and really does not want to finish the interview.
This video just proves how vital it is to be self informed especially in a situation where you're suppose to be an expert in the field or a person that the public is going to turn to for information. Honestly, the whole thing is embarrassing. I respect Samuel Jackson's reaction to it, because this is an issue that often goes overlooked. Furthermore, I respect the reported for apologizing for his mistake and his attempt to recover the interview. Although it did fail. Perhaps, in another broadcast he should address the issue at large, about either racial identification or about misinformation, and then apologize again in a controlled broadcast.
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