By Lutful Kabir Khan The Gateway

“All you can report upon is NOW - on what you see, what you hear, and what you touch,” said Ann Medina, CBC foreign

correspondent, “if you play God - think you can read in a crys- tal ball what’s going to happen tomorrow... tomorrow gets

as

Just the Facts, Please

blown up in your face.”

Medina was speaking before a large gathering at the Uni- versity of Alberta Nov. 27th on ‘The Role of The Media in International Politics.’

According to Medina, a re- porter’s primary objective is to report, not to ‘go out and cru-

Sa ‘‘A reporter’s jobis to find out if something is true or false and report it to the

people” GPL ae

sade, not to save lives, not to

_ mould peoples opinions’.

“There is no such thing as pure objectivity... but there’s still something in our guts that can distinguish between what is more objective or less objec- tive, more subjective or less subjective.”

It is very important for a reporter not to have a pre-

conceived notion on what she is going to write ‘like a tourist who has all the details planned out even before boarding the plane’; a true reporter has to be ready for the unexpected, th

contrary. :

“Everyone was saying the people of Syria hated Assad,” Medina said, “but I went there and found outit was his brother the head of internal security,

that the people hated; they love Assad.”’ Reporters should go looking for a story. They don’t know what they are going to find.

Reporters should not be con- sidering what effect their sto- ries are going to have on mil- lions of readers or viewers.

“Aid is being abused in Afri-

ca; should we keep from report-

ing it just because there might be less aid and more people would die?” she said; “Our job is to report the facts... maybe that will change government attitude and the abuse of aid.”

“The Israelis were trying to justify their raids by publicis-

‘ing the suicide bombings by

the Shiite extremists in Leba- non,” said Medina, “I went to Tyre... talked to the people... they were just regular people. The Israelis have done some- thing to the whole Shiite that prompted them to do these. But the Israelis wanted us to believe they were extremists only to justify what they were doing.”

“President Reagan did the same thing about Gaddafi,” she noted, “Itis tragic that the media was accepting what Reagan was claiming as true faith.”

“A reporter’s job is to find out if something is true or false and to report it to the people,” Medina said, “I am as much worried about the government controlling us as I am about terrorists controlling us.” Medina discussed the Vietnam war and its coverage by the media. “Maybe the coverage stopped the war,” she said, “but we should not weigh the consequences of our reporting and self-censor the reports.”

“Tf people die in Africa, I am very sorry. I cry at night think- ing that my report contributed to that, but itis better for meto report than to hold back in-

formation,” Medina said.