journalism morals

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2011/11/the_which_mp_would_you_go_to_bed_with_poll.html#comments

The which MP would you go to bed with poll 

The Herald reports:

Nikki Kaye and Jacinda Ardern are leading a “sexiest politician” poll – but poor old Bill English has no admirers.

But the popularity of the online survey by a Whitireia New Zealand journalism class has some asking if anyone has been stuffing the ballot box.

At 9pm yesterday the “babes” of Parliament led the survey titled “Which politician would you go to bed with?”, with Paula Bennett and Melissa Lee following close behind. …

Sigh, I’m to blame for this story. The poll at Newswire had a total of five responses until I tweeted and facebooked the question “Hmmn, should a journalism school be running a poll on which MP you would like to fuck?”

I do think the poll is inappropriate for two reasons.

The first is there is a difference between a poll asking someone to rate hotness, and explicitly asking “Which politician would you go to bed with”. A fine line maybe, but one that got crossed.

The second is that the annual hotness survey of MPs is done by Durex. I can totally understand why they run such a survey, as it fits their products and brand.

But this poll is run by the Whitireia School of Journalism. I think that is a bad look.

Jim Tucker, who runs the journalism course, wrote on Facebook: “Some people are actually taking it seriously – especially a lot of politicians who appear to have ordered their staff and friends to vote for them.”

He then told the Herald the poll started as a “p*ss take”.

“We had a long discussion in class about putting up some sort of poll, our first of the election.

“The usual discussions were – will you vote, who are you going to vote for and so on. But the class decided to do something different, and see what people would actually vote about.

“It actually grew from ‘which politician would you spend time on a desert island with’.”

Interesting there is a different version of how the poll came about on Facebook, from one of the students:

Haha. I would like to go on the record as opposing, vehemently, this idea when it was pitched to the class by Jim. He wants us to be ‘different’. …

Yeah. I have no idea what he was … thinking. Trying to sex it up perhaps? I don’t find it funny or compelling at all. Yes. Jim’s idea entirely. Most of the class told him it was lame.

I tried to redirect it but failed. There is little point fighting these things

Again, I think it is a bad look. Is this going to raise confidence in the values being taught to aspiring journalists?

East Wellington Superhero (521) Says: 
November 10th, 2011 at 10:37 am

I find it odd that people who turn their nose up at ‘morals’, then ask for people to have ‘values’. C.S. Lewis wrote a good essay called The Abolition of Man about this.

Journalism Schools are set to Not to write the truth objectively but to be an agent of change