Off mark

I was really angry and sad after I found out a fellow journo from a local daily tabloid, Kosmo! was maliciously condemned by a self-proclaimed Islamic blogger just because the news she co-wrote about one Malaysian artist wedding reception in Kedah, bore this headline 'Ayu usaha puaskan Zaquan'.

The said journo, Norlida Akmar Idros, a young mother of two, is a friend and a kind one, to boot.

I got to know about it through one of my chat room in my BB list and was really spoiled my mood for the entire night.

In his posting dated January 24, 2011, the blogger who uses Mahaguru58 as his pseudo, maliciously posted and painted my friend Ida as a person who is not just tactless, but like a woman with loose moral for putting that headline for the article she wrote with her colleague, Ahmad Syahir Kassim.

He even go on posted her picture, which he took from her FB page (by the time I came to read his posting, he has since removed the picture) and a link to her FB page. The picture that the blogger (whose real name, as he claimed in his blog as Zainol Abideen) posted was one of Ida and her daughter.

He even urged my friend to bertaubat for her supposed sin by putting up that kind of headline.

While the headline itself is quite misleading (to some people), but what is really regrettable was this so called Muslim blogger went out and lashing the wrong person and conducted a personal attack on one person only.

To me, this is the worst of character when you decided to blame it on a woman instead of taking a pick on both writers.

One thing, he missed the point all together as the headline is not the writers' doing. Headlines are deitors and sub-editor's job. They decides on what any article should be tittled. Not us, journos. Our job is to gather the news, write it and send it to be edited (and sometimes butchered) by our bosses and have to accept whatever the headlines that the editors deciced for our articles.

And normally, we could only see the final job the next day for us print journos. So, it is unfair for anybody to lash it to us when the headlines went a bit off or totally wrong, because we have editors who sees to it.

Bear in mind, mainstream newspapers like Kosmo!, Berita Harian, NST, Utusan and The Star are big dailies which employs a LOT of journos (including the stringers) and pelase do not assume that our editors would call us up and discuss the headlines with us.

We are too far down the newspaper pyramid to be treated like a decision maker.

The most appaling thing is, this so called Muslim blogger who promotes Islamic way of life, failed to see, while he is trying to be a champion to protacts the 'air muka' of the said celebrities, he slandered one Muslim woman and her child who clearly has nothing to do with the article.

The posting gets 13 comments, some equally slanderous, others tried to defend Ida. However, other comments posted by us (myself and few friends who defended and scolds the blogger for his unsavoury act) were not published.

Funny part is, in his profile, under his comment policy, he put up the rules which includes that he would not post comments that is attacking himself as a person, which prompt me to think, it is okay for him to do a personal attack towards other, even to a point slandering an innocent being, but people could not do the same towards him.

He even posted many other posting after that particular personal attack on Ida, some on Islamic teaching (which is great) but failed to realised, Islam and it's faith is not just about your relationship with Allah, but also with ummah or other people.

He is preaching Islam without properly practicing it, to my eyes. And a shame when he doesn't even want to clarify the matter even after various comments from friends of Ida about how journos works.

We, journos are prone to misunderstanding remarks and condemn by people that we are blinded to those people who failed to read and failed to think and make full use of their brain capacities. However, when things gets personal, don't blame us if we singled you out to taste the brunt of our acid tounge.