By C C Lung
Justice of Peace
Apollo 11: How did President Nixon phone the astronauts a quarter million miles in space at a time of B&W TV and stone-age communication technology?
THE wide open social media space is compelling new thoughts about the limitation of journalism, a space I have been a part of, and of the need for journalists to evolved, or specifically, get better.
Some maverick recently posed questions about the truth of the 1969 Lunar landing and doubts about what’s supposed to be established science.
How did President Nixon phone the Nasa astronauts a quarter million miles in space at a time of B&W TV and stone-age communication technology?
Who or what took those photographs in a supposedly vacuum environment , and with a supposedly rudimentary (though expensive) Hasseblad film camera?
Why hasn’t the US revisited the moon?
Scientists describe the sun as a burning ball of fire.
No one has been near the sun but everyone accepts the statement until the mavericks asked: how’s burning possible in a vacuum space with no air and no fuel?
Words shape people’s perception and perspective other than the obvious function as medium of information.
Thus the primitive elementary definition of objective reporting needs to be dissected.
As a green horn, I was told that being objective was to report what was said.
I wasn’t told about discretion or whether I should have enough in me to judge if what was said was crediblt or if the spokesman was credible.
My job was to corroborate which simply meant to ask another party or expert if my original source was to be believed.
It’s an inconvenient and sometimes offensive process which, I’ve learnt, is nowadays infrequently practised.
This of course is aggravated by the language limitation of new reporters and the declining passion for news depth.
The age-old editorial dismissal of jargon shaped journalists’ tendency to, in the name of writing for the masses, to bothering to understand and explain jargon in science, or philosophy, or economics.
In so doing, the wealth and depth of am argument are not adequately conveyed, and unwittingly, the journalists failed in their professional mission of ‘informing’ their audience.
Mainstream science accepted the reports on the Apollo missions.
Mainstream media and their owners are not in the business of debunking science and its theories.
Who knows, those advancing a new twist to theory that the physics of burning could be the Deep State of the Rothchilds, or the Reptilians or the Iluminati, or the Freemasons.
The world has advanced by quantum leaps since Neil Armstrong supposedly walked on the moon.
Its hard to believe that we still refused to ask the right questions.
And when we do ask questions, do the studies and found the answers, we still refuse to accept them.
The Sabah cabinet who recently swore against corruption in an elaborate integrity ceremony included a bunch whose names have not been cleared of a mining licensing scandal.
The media gave the event the usual splash.
None alluded to the scandal for which two of their former colleagues were awaiting trial.
None alluded to the fact that integrity isn’t what you swear to, it is what you choose to do when no one is looking.
Ask questions, or someone will.
