Ethical Journalism: Analyzing the Rohingya Crisis Multimedia Report

This report analyzes a New York Times multimedia article focusing on the Rohingya crisis and the mass migration from Myanmar. It examines how the multimedia features effectively tell the story of the refugees and discusses the ethical considerations journalists face when gathering sensitive information. The report also identifies best practices for constructing engaging multimedia news stories, emphasizing the importance of chronological information, and the self-explanatory nature of audio-visual materials. It concludes that multimedia articles enhance understanding, particularly for those who may not easily decipher textual information, and highlights their increasing prevalence on online platforms.

Running head: THE FATE OF ROHINGYA
THE FATE OF ROHINGYA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1THE FATE OF ROHINGYA
Executive Summary
The purpose of the report is to analyze the multimedia article that the New York Time published
that is based on the major migration of the world done by the Rohingya people from Myanmar to
other neighboring countries. The report focuses mainly on the journalistic ethics that are
followed during the collection of data and for an article consisting of pictures, texts and videos.
The report concludes by stating the best possible practices that can be followed by a journalist in
constructing a multimedia article that is best suited as a story-telling method.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................3
2. Analysis....................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Respond to Question Number 1.............................................................................................4
2.2 Respond to Question Number 2.............................................................................................4
2.3 Respond to Question Number 3.............................................................................................5
3. Conclusion................................................................................................................................5
4. Reference..................................................................................................................................6

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1. Introduction
Multimedia articles have become a common trend of publishing new stories over online
portals by every media agency. This report explains a multimedia article published by the New
York Times based on the Rohingya crisis that took place in August 2017, which involved mass
murders and burning of property by the Myanmar military. The Rohingya people are a section of
minorities inhabiting the Rakhine province of Myanmar. The population consists of a major
section of people following the Islam religion, though there are presences of some Hindus living
in the area (Parnini, 2013). The population is usually composed of the labourers who migrated to
Myanmar when the country was a British colony (Tonkin, 2014). The report also attempts to
explain how the multimedia article published by New York Times comprises of proper
journalistic storytelling methods and also how the journalists considered all their professional
ethics while covering such a sensitive topic.
2. Analysis
The news article published by the New York Times is a multimedia article which comprises of
videos, photos and texts that narrates the incident of the Rohingya crisis where the entire
population had to flee from Myanmar to the neighbouring countries like Bangladesh in order to
saves their lives from the brutal mass killings done by the Myanmar military. The Rohingya
population was a result of the migration by labourers from countries like India and Bangladesh to
Myanmar during the colonial rule of the British over Myanmar. The natives of the country never
considered the Rohingya people as a part of their motherland and after Myanmar got their
independence in the year 1948, the Myanmar Government also did not consider the Rohingya

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population as a part of the country’s ethnic groups (Rahman, 2015). The Rohingya people were
always considered as a refugee influx in the land of Myanmar. Approximately 655,000 people
had to leave their homes because their houses were torched by the army and thousands of people
lost their lives in the process of escaping (Munita et al., 2017). People had to cross rivers and
walk over mud-filled walkways to protect the lives of their family members from the mass
killing. It is one of the world’s most rapid mass-migration as described by the United Nations.
2.1 Respond to Question Number 1
Multimedia article have become a recent trend with the coming of the new age
technology in which a combination of text, images and videos are used together in order to
present a specific new article. The New York Times’ multimedia article based on the mass
migration of the Rohingya people from Myanmar to the neighbouring countries, narrates a
compelling story in which the people can be seen struggling with their live and the lives of their
family members. The images and videos show the kind of brutal chasing that the people had to
face from the Myanmar military and it also represents the sufferings that the people had to go
through that was accompanied with a number of diseases and irreversible loss of body parts.
2.2 Respond to Question Number 2
The news of the Rohingya mass-migration spread like a wild fire among the global news
agencies through their international sources. The New York Times made full use of this
opportunity in which they had sent some of their American reports to the lands where the
incident took place in order to collect first hand data. The entire crew of reporters lived amongst
the suffering of the migrated population and that is how they were able to exclusive images and
footages for their news story. Though, there are journalistic ethics where a reporter is not
allowed to publish any material that would harm the sentiments of any community or individual,

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or even affect the mental conditions of the readers (Berry, 2013), the reporters of the ‘How the
Rohingya Escaped’ gave enough footages and photographs where the people are shown to have
lost parts of their body and images of washed dead bodies found ashore after a boat capsized.
However, gathering such sensitive information also includes professional ethics where a reporter
is to collect true data and not manipulate them for enhanced readership (Frost, 2015)
2.3 Respond to Question Number 3
The article ‘How the Rohingya Escaped’ is one of the best ways to understand how a
multimedia article should be constructed in which an entire timeline of the incident is provided
through which a reader can receive a chronological piece of information and also makes it easier
to locate the required information about the incident that took place. Audio – visual materials
become the best possible ways by which a reader is able to draw the maximum amount of
information because such materials are self-explanatory and do not need text passages to support
the provided information information.
3. Conclusion
Therefore, the paper concludes on a note that it is significantly easier for readers to
understand information when presented in a multimedia format because a multimedia article can
provide the basic set of information even to individuals who do not possess the ability to
decipher the textual information. Multimedia articles are a product of the advancement in the
technological sector of the media business and multimedia articles are only available on the
online portals of renowned media agencies.

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4. Reference
Berry, D. (2013). Ethics and media culture: Practices and representations. Focal Press.
Frost, C. (2015). Journalism ethics and regulation. Routledge.
Munita, T., Solomon, B., El-Naggar, M., & Dean, A. (2017). How the Rohingya Escaped.
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/how-the-
rohingya-escaped.html
Parnini, S. N. (2013). The crisis of the Rohingya as a Muslim minority in Myanmar and bilateral
relations with Bangladesh. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 33(2), 281-297.
Rahman, K. A. (2015). Ethno-political conflict: The Rohingya vulnerability in
Myanmar. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Studies, 2(1), 288-95.
Tonkin, D. (2014). The Rohingya Identity–Further Thoughts. Network Myanmar.