Thursday, June 21, 2007

News reporting standards in Jordan

I am really interested to hear other opinions on news reporting standards (or lack of) in Jordan, especially online media. Here are some of my observations:

  1. Photos not related to the story
  2. Photo captions are misleading, irrelevant, and inaccurate
  3. You see people receiving certificates, holding meetings, etc but few names are provided
  4. Inaccurate translation to English
  5. Story talks about launching a new web site for example but the link is not provided
  6. No references to sources of information and mixing original contributions with copied material from other news media
  7. Poor taste

Here are a couple of examples of photos that perhaps should not have made the Petra web page which is the Official News agency in Jordan (photos copied from www.petra.gov.jo):


This photo was part of a series on a news story last summer on a sit-in by citizens unhappy with new broadcast restrictions on world soccor games. Should a picture like this appear on Jordan's official news agency's web site??? I am also curious, was the man on the ground asked for permission to broadcast his picture to the whole world basically?


The picture above has the caption of: "Saudi Monarch Arrives in Amman" but all you see if this poor animal been slaughtered under the curious phone cameras of the crowd. Gross! At the very least there should be an explanation for what is being photographed.

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