Real reporters can't be celebrity cheerleaders

• Source: Global Times
• [02:32 March 12 2010]
• Comments

When on assignment, a reporter's job is to report, not cheer or jeer.

If, for example, he deserves to be praised, editors may do so in their columns, but not on the news pages. Reporters are way out of line in cheering him at a news conference.

This problem is certainly not confined to Chinese journalists. At the Winter Olympics in Vancouver last month, Canadian journalists were officially warned against showing effusive support for Canadian athletes.

By joining the Olympics torch run, Canadian journalists had been reduced to cheerleaders for the occasion. Thereafter, many openly rooted for Canadian athletes as a "patriotic" act, unmindful of violating journalistic ethics. They simply forgot that they were assigned to cover all partici-pants and not just Canadians.

There is a lot that Chinese journalists need not learn from their Western counterparts