The 5 W’s of professional journalism

I learned early in my first career as a Business Reporter the five W’s for asking questions .. when, what, where, who, and why. An additional “H” for how complements the W’s ... and are the fundamentals for honest and professional journalism. The 5 W’s are used for  gathering information, conducting research, and digging out the facts. The “how” helps interpret the event/story. “How this happened or why this happened” represents the opinion of the author, journalist, or reporter.

The five W’s define the subject, action, timing, location, and the H covers the reason: together they provide an understanding of a topic. Today’s journalism and media reporting though lack this fundamental concept and confuse the general public ... what is fact and what is opinion?

Distinguishing the difference, is crucial. I want to know the facts first, then the opinions. Opinions are influenced by who gives them and may be based on wrong or incomplete information. More critical is the continuous “feeding” of biased opinions can lead to “brain washing”, diplomatically described as “propaganda”. Advertising for buy this or that is relatively OK, as media and news sources need to survive, but brainwashing is unacceptable and dangerous. Brainwashing is the systematic and often forceful application of psychological techniques to get a person to change their core beliefs, attitudes, and loyalties in favor of new, unwanted ideas or doctrines, usually without their knowledge.

More seriously, repetition of propaganda, recognized in psychology as the illusory truth effect, describes how repeated exposure to information - even false or questionable information - makes people more likely to believe it is true. Repetition makes information easier for the brain to process, a concept known as "processing fluency," which the brain misattributes as a signal of truth.

Here are 7 suggestions to help navigate the media and news and avoid falling in the propaganda trap.

• Chose reliable sources: It is tempting to “click” based on an attractive heading or photo. Better to stay with known and trusted sources.
• Check the date of the information, rather than the vague “X days ago, X week ago, X hours ago”...
• Ascertain who are these interviewed experts. Who made them experts? They sound great in retrospect ... after the facts but sound “wishy washy” about the future.
• Be watchful of invitations to trivial details that add minutia to the subject of interest. Avoid “falling in the weeds!”
• Be on guard when news are promoted as disasters, crises, emergencies, warning, immediate actions required, what you need to know...
• Don’t be deceived by the use of words like possibly, conceivably, potentially, most likely, presumably, arguably, plausibly, on the other side, speculate ...
• Validate when statistics are used to back an opinion or an important conclusion.

These seven suggestions are not full proof but should help you mitigate the biased and misleading communication of information of facts, rumors, or half-truths, spread by groups or governments to manipulate public opinion and behavior.

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