Journalistic credibility
Recently, I read a news item in one of our national English language dailies which reported killing of a rickshaw-puller Rafiqul Islam (35) by an influential person's associates just because the former's hands touched the latter's body. This unfortunate incident took place at Adabor in the capital.
As I was going through another national Bengali language dailies of that day, a news caught my attention. It seemed that this was the same news as mentioned above but surprisingly presented in a different way. This report said that a businessman named Rafiqul Islam (30) was beaten to death by some persons when the former during his evening walk collided with a passer-by. This incident also reportedly occurred at Adabor. Both the news reports mentioned that the police had recovered Rafiqul's body from a roadside ditch.
Well, I am not going to comment on the tragic incident but the question is which news is based on fact? Meanwhile, I am really disappointed to record the big differences in the presentation of the news by the reporters of the two leading newspapers.
It is known that journalists should always seek the truth, absolute truth before reporting an event. Credibility is one of the important pillars of journalism. Credibility refers to the objective and subjective components of the credibility of a source or message. According to the code of ethics, professional integrity is the cornerstone of journalistic credibility. Integrity is the consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, and principles. Before dispatching news, a journalist should test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent errors and distortion of the content of the news. A journalist should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know. In case of print journalism, journalists should always keep in their minds that people have trust on printed words as these are documented. Presentation of wrong or distorted information may cause a serious loss to individuals around whom the news has been composed and to those who read the news in the newspaper.
So, journalists need to be always critical in upholding credibility and professional integrity.
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