One code that I believe I clearly complied with is the very first; “Accuracy”. This refers to making sure all information used is accurate, that statements and facts are made clear of which of the two they are, and the headline is relevant to the content of the article. Firstly, I made sure to only use information such as statistics, from trusted, well reputable websites that are either written by medical professionals or by people who were helped by professionals. For example, one of my articles was co-written with Dr. Zwanenberg, who is a trained and experienced Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. I also made sure to make facts and statements clear as if I didn’t, the reader may become confused and false information could be spread. I did this by writing “research suggests” when stating statistics and didn’t use quotation marks, I then used the pronoun “he” and used quotation marks for comments that were not technically factual. This clearly distinguished what was a comment and what was a fact as seeing quotation marks would connote to the reader that it is just something that my Head of sixth form has said and not to take it as fact. My headline was also relevant to my article, reading “School and Mental Health: Match Made in Heaven?”. This headline is relevant as my article discusses the relationship between school and mental health. For example, my article reads “it would be easy to point the blame at school and the stress that comes alongside it”. I also made sure to make the article relevant to the positive connotations that come with the word “Heaven”. I did this by swinging the bias positively towards school, giving a topic in which the statistics are normally negative for a positive spin.
Many codes set by IPSO are not very relevant to the topic of my article, for example; “Hospitals” and “Payment to Criminals”. However, this doesn’t mean none were relevant. Another code I had to consider and comply with was “Harassment”. This refers to making sure no potential source is intimidated or under “persistent pursuit”. When getting information and statements, I made sure not to persistently ask to an uncomfortable degree. I did this by getting statistics from secondary sources that did not require permission because the statistics were from public papers. I also chose a primary source that I knew would not need to be pushed into doing anything, and even if they did, I could choose another person to ask within school as there are many who could help. e.g. those who work in student services. In the end, I simply had to ask my Head of sixth form once and he happily cooperated and answered the questions I had prepared. e.g. “social media has had a big impact”.
The third code that I considered when writing my article was “Discrimination”. This refers to not mentioning a persons race, ethnicity, religion, and much more, when writing your article. This is if these things are not relevant to the article or the context you are giving within it. I made sure not to mention anything such as race and religion in my article as I believed it was not relevant to the point that the article was trying to make. For example, when referring to my interviewee, I called him my “head of sixth form” and did not disclose any more information about him.
https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/
No comments:
Post a Comment