Written by Michael Thervil
Here at VEDA, the one thing we have a distaste for, is fake news and dishonest journalism. Over the course of the weekend, we ran into an article written by Dominic Anthony Walsh for Houston Public Media, a subsidiary of the University of Houston. This article is not to cause “journalistic injury” to the author of this article, but rather to point out that you as a reader should always be somewhat skeptical of what you are reading when you consume, especially when it comes from news media sources. The article in question is entitled “Houston ISD Requires Remaining Human Resources Staffers to Work Overtime and Weekends, Without Pay, One Week After Layoffs”.
We get it, there are many people within the city of Houston who are upset and frustrated with what’s going on with the school board and administration here; but because the public expresses the fact that their upset and frustrated is not a green light to exploit their oftentimes misguided anger and frustration for clicks and views. As Journalist, we should always strive to be as factual, unbiased, and as transparent that we can be when it comes to delivering news to the public.
The Houston Independent School District HISD Human Resource personnel in question are not working overtime and they are not working for free as that would be illegal. The HISD personnel who are the subject of this article are salary employees and thus like any other salary employee within any kind of industry they are subjected to the duties for the position they signed up for. So, in this case, Mike Miles is well within his rights as the HISD Superintendent to have his salaried human resource personnel work weekends and what would equate to overtime (over 40 hours a week) to get the job done that is needed to bring HISD a failing school district up to speed.
Our question is: if it was reported within the article written by Dominic Anthony Walsh for Houston Public Media that Superintendent Mike Miles addressed the fact that “he hasn’t seen the email asking employees to work overtime.”; then why would anyone lead an article with the headline: “Houston ISD Requires Remaining Human Resources Staffers Work Overtime and Weekends, Without Pay, One Week After Layoffs”? What’s the motivation for headlining the article as such? We are living in very sensitive times with a lot of “sensitive people” unfortunately. We are not sure if this article is a mistake, or if the author is attempting to infuriate people more than they already are, or if the article in question is simply a causality of poor journalism.
Either way, please be somewhat skeptical of what you as a reader consume from the media. Take time out to consider the angle of the article. Is it promoting something or an agenda? Or is it spinning a story? Again, consider these things and more before blindly believing what you’re reading for face value. We’ll leave you with this: when we were coming up, it was understood that fake news only belonged in the National Inquirer.
Comments