01 Biography
Hello! I am Clara Ip Wai Nam, currently a year one student studying Communications and Public Relations at Community College of City University. Since young, I am always proud that I am born as a Hongkong-er, not only because of the heavenly delicacies and the fantastic nightlife, but also the fact that we could enjoy the freedom of speech and the mix of different cultures in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the governments that accept criticism and comments from citizens and journalists in Asian countries, as most politicians will try to utilise language art to escape being judged and criticised. As the adage goes "two heads are better than one", I believe that the effectiveness of the policies can be boosted through taking suggestions provided by thousands of citizens, even it may cause a lot of voices and protests. Influenced by the environment around me, I grew more interested in journalism and linguist, I hope after attending lessons in the VSP programme I could have a clearer vision of my dream.
Studying abroad is, in fact, one of my dreams. As I am still in year one, I hope with this opportunity of taking up lessons in the University of British Columbia. I hope my abilities can be nurtured and could try to utilise some of the theories and concepts learnt in my home university in some practical exercises, in order to understand more thoroughly.
During my leisure time, I will also watch videos on youtube. Two of the few bloggers that I followed are Connor Franta and Logan Paul. These two bloggers have shown me both positive and negative effects of the social media, as we can bring both positive and negative energy to the society with the content we post in the social media.
First, I would like to talk about the blogger Connor Franta, who is a homosexual writer/ blogger. Not only impressed by the photos and videos he took that can bring out the beauty of nature, but I am also impressed that he emphasises a lot of the importance of getting more knowledge through reading books and building up good habits. He did also mention several times that it is vital for everyone to open up to his or her feelings to others, just like how he was coming up. Even though I am not a homosexual person, I am still happy that more and more people start to support the LGBT community after bloggers, like Connor Franta, begins to speak up in front of the camera and the public.
As for the blogger Logan Paul, who had the most subscribers in youtube, after the issue that he filmed and published a video of the body of a person who committed suicide in the Japan famous suicide forest, the Aokigahara. Through this issue, I realise the power and the impact of social media may sometimes influence or even manipulate our belief and actions.
02 COMPANY VISIT
As one of the VSP participants, it's been an honour to have the opportunity to visit the national television and radio broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on June 14, 2018. It is thoughful that the company has to provide Canada's official boardcasting services in bilingual(English and French) to television and radio audiences.
While entering their office, I wonder how empty it is, as there is only a few people working in the office. It turns out because of the different working hours the broadcasters have. Even though their workplace is not so spacious, they well-ultilise every inch of the office. In order to provide radio and television services to the public twenty-four-seven, Their six different time zone stations in Canada are scheduled to in-charge the broadcadting services to whole country in different timeslots. Vancouver office usaually takes in-charge of broadcasting duty after 8pm Toronto time everyday. There are two crews working in the Vancouver office daily by 2 shift duties from every afternoon to midnight and midnight to morning.That's why only few staff are working in office after 10 a.m.
After the explanation from one of the staff, I realise that being a television broadcaster is more complicated than I thought, especially for a news reporter. The boardcaster should always keep his/er alertness mode and quick response on time controlling and sudden interruption from breaking news. It is not easy to control well of their speed and make adjustments when time-keeper say whether it is light (ahead of schedule) or heavy (behind schedule). The techique on their reporting skills on pace and tone are very critical element to a boardcaster. Even though it seems stressful to be a television broadcaster, I understand a success boardcasting programme will be impossible without the help of the crews in the control room. The team facilitates the television broadcaster by timekeeping, operating the cameras, making a story line and handling technical problems etc...
Without a teamwork, nothing will be happened.
I believe having the ability to improvise, maintain a neutral position and prepare beforehand are also two of the most crucial skills to be a radio broadcaster. The radio broadcaster has to understand the whole issue so as to maintain the discussion with the guest by throwing out some good arguable questions. In the process of understanding the topic, it is unavoidable to take stances. However, the radio broadcaster must maintain neutral while having the discussion with the guest on air, he/ she must not add any personal feeling into the discussion, but to listen to the opinions from the guest.
Through this company visit, not only I could understand how the television and radio broadcasting corporate runs and the work of the television & radio broadcasters but also get to know some fun facts. For example, it is being a radio broadcaster does not need the ability to avoid any coughs or other human reflexive sounds as there is a button for muting sounds. That is why I think that this field trip to the Candian Broadcasting Corporation is indeed a remarkable experience.
03 News outlet project
“Diplomacy please”
“Firing blindly”
“Syria return must be supervised by U.N. refugees tell Bassil”
These headlines arose me and my group mates’ interests in people’s situation in Lebonon. As we are seldom put our focus on this issue in the past, Lebonon always gives us an unstable impressions, such as restrictions, conflicts, discriminations and riots. After keeping track of The Daily Star's front page from 11 June to 20 June, we found that their media are extremely politicalized and polarized. It led to the Lebonon citizensunable to voice out their suggestions or feedbacks, and sometimes their speech were intentionally being distrorted by third parties. Most horribly, no one would help them to solve these problems. Based on The Daily Star front pages, we decided to summarise the articles and analyse the news values used every day.
At my first glance of the articles from The Daily Star, I could not help but feel angry at Lebanon's Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil. I was so convinced by the editor that the way of Bassil thinking on the U.N. agencies who were willing to help Lebanon just because their intention on turning Lebanon to good account is laughable. Looking at Lebanon's current situation, they were hardly thriving economically and politically. It seemed like very difficult. It is difficult, if not impossible for any countries to take any advantages from a country that can barely feed themselves. Moreover, I also thought that Bassil overreacted to announce an order of freeze on the renewal and issuance of residency permits for the UNHCR staff in Lebanon, when they are just asking questions to Syrian refugees about their preparation for life back in Syria in order to understand refugees' situation.
However, after doing some research, I finally understood the reasons why Lebanon decided to restrict the number of Syrians entering the country and why would Bassil try to minimise the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon leniently. Only referring to the information given in the articles, I did not realise that people in Lebanon were facing a lot of severe problems, such as unemployment and housing crisis. The massive inflow of the Syrian refugees had actually worsened their circumstances. I thought while people were pitying those Syrian refugees and blaming Bassil for convincing Syrian refugee not to go to Lebanon. They should understand that Lebanon had tried their best to take in as much refugee as possible in the past few years with around 1.5 million of Syrian refugee registered in Lebanon.
Through this news outlet project, I understood that we should not judge a book by its cover and trust the information the news outlet give us. Instead, we should do more research, understand the background before we jump to the conclusion. As the reasons behind Bassil's actions were not told, it is very misleading and may cause citizens, and Syrian refugees misunderstood the intention of Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil's actions, especially when these people may not have many resources for them to gather information. With limited information, it is impossible not to be misled as the news outlet did not clarify and expose both sides of the story.
04 CONTACT
