For my daughter’s career day project at school, she decided to see what the world of journalism is like. She visited her cousin in Pretoria and the two of them decided to spend the day in a daily newspaper’s editorial department.
The first thing she told me was how fast everything happened and that the people there type at the speed of light and that she needed to work on her typing skills. But that was not what upset me about her whole experience.
She was asked to quickly answer a telephone call because all the others there were busy on other lines.
Scared of not knowing how to answer the phone, she politely just said hello and her name. The person on the other side, according to my daughter, started to verbally abuse her. The person obviously thought he/ she was speaking to a journalist. The things my daughter heard were enough to break a 17-year-old’s passion for becoming a writer or journalist forever.
She cried so much, it was heartbreaking to witness. I spoke to the supervisor at the media house in Pretoria who said that this happens on a daily basis and that the journalists there are verbally abused for the smallest things. She even said that one of their journalists was told to go and kill him-/ herself.
I am beyond shocked and truly concerned about how society treats those who merely want to spread the news.
My daughter does not want to pursue journalism any more, purely because of that telephone call, yet, when I explained to her that life is full of telephone calls like that one, she withdrew completely.
Maybe this was a blessing in disguise, because we live in a cruel world.
Either way, my daughter did not deserve that.
