By Joseph Akim Gordon
A journalist or reporter is responsible for researching and writing news articles, informational news articles, and stories about real events from a fair and unbiased perspective. Their duties include interviewing experts, gathering first-hand accounts of events, and organizing an outline into a cohesive, interesting story.
The duties of a journalist are to write stories or articles for newspapers, magazines, or websites and create scripts to be read on television or radio. Review stories or articles for accuracy, style, and grammar. Update stories or articles as new information becomes available. Investigating new story or article ideas and pitching ideas to editors.
The four roles of journalists are as follows: The normative, cognitive, practiced, and narrated roles correspond to conceptually distinct ideas: what the journal seeks to do, what they want to do, what the journalist really does, and what they think they do.
Skills that are required by journalists include communication. It is the primary role of a journalist to communicate news, either written or verbally. He or she must pay attention to detail, be persistent, have skills in research, logical reasoning, and objectivity, be knowledgeable, and have problem-solving skills.
The 5 Ws of journalism—who, what, where, when, and why—are key reporter’s questions that begin the process of piecing your story together, one fact at a time.
Journalism falls into four broad categories: news journalism, investigative journalism, feature journalism, and opinion and analysis. These types then branch out into a variety of different niches, styles, and techniques, with specialties ranging from politics and crime to sports and entertainment.
The qualities required for a journalistic career are courage, integrity, and fairness. You also need to have superior writing, verbal, and interpersonal skills to excel as a newspaper journalist. It is important that the news that is broadcast be worthy; it must have an impact on the audience, and the news being communicated must be delivered timely because consumers expect timely information.
The essential qualities of a good journalist are thorough knowledge and investigative skills; an effective communicator; professionalism and confidence; persistence and discipline; and journalistic ethics.
The journalistic ethic and standards comprise principles of ethics and good practice, the media ethics known as the journalistic professional code of ethics, and canons of journalism. This includes broadcast media, films, theatre, the arts, print media, and the Internet.
The element of journalism’s first obligation is the truth and loyalty to citizens; the essence of the discipline of verification is that a journalist must be independent in the journalistic presentation; ethics serve as a guide to moral behavior daily and help judge behavior with justice.
The duties of a journalist include taking responsibility for the accuracy of their work, verifying information before releasing it, balancing the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort, and avoiding conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Journalism deserves confidentiality, intellectual property, and national security.
The basics of journalism always answer the who, what, where, when, and how of a news article. It is essential that capacity development is vital to enable them to render good services to the audience, so training should be progressive, moving from simple to more complicated and with opportunity for practical application; training activities should be active with provocative interest and desire; the content of training should be concrete; abstract principles and simple operations should be demonstrated with learning aids; visual aids should be used whenever necessary; and learning should be founded on frequent repetition. Learning should be amusing, enjoyable, and done with honor.
To realize development opportunities, you need to expose the participants to the problems and the community’s needs. They should get involved in the project proposals, which must be designed by the participants to improve their knowledge and skills in all project activities. To have the capacity to manage technical and administrative organizations in the community.
Yellow journalism is when you falsely report without evidence. This can become counterproductive; a journalist is likely to be persecuted in a court of law, and whenever the journalist exaggerates so that the newspaper is sold faster, this also exposes the journalist to problems. Some politicians are scared of journalists because they can expose their weaknesses.
In undemocratic countries, journalists are considered enemies of the state; in many cases, they are imprisoned, made to disappear, or killed. This has intimidated some journalists into not reporting the truth because they are scared of the consequences of reporting accurately.
Also, journalists are famous as they usually interview important personalities in the country, be they the president or the cabinet, and attend or are invited to important gatherings in the Government and in the church.
They became famous in the country. To be safe in the work of journalism, you need to acquire advanced knowledge in the field. All your reports must be based on truth and accuracy, and you need to have evidence of your sources of information.
The author can be reached by e-mail: akimgordon222@gmail.com