So this is journalism huh?

Last Friday, I came across this product review in the Today's paper on my newly acquired toy phone, the Samsung Omnia, and I was quite angry at what was published on the paper. To those who are free enough to read, here is the review.

Basically, what it is saying is that, the phone sucks, and cannot be compared to the Apple iPhone. Normally, I'm quite fine with criticism to products, but having used this product for 2 weeks, I can't help but feel injustice done to this phone. Sure it has its flaws, but it's not as bad as the reviewer made it out to be. Moreover, the reviewer had a preference to the iPhone (oh trust me, you can tell if you read the review), and her description of the flaws of the phone was way off. Then it occurred to me that the reviewer had not really tried to explore the phone thoroughly, or she was those people who will simply condemn things that she cannot grasp. Anyway, whichever it is, this is no way to write a review (but please don't ask me to write one) , hence I decided to send an email to this technology editor to see what she have to say about what I feel.

The email I sent is as follows (Warning: long boring text ahead):

Dear Ariel,

Regarding the mentioned article, I would like to point out a couple of things.

Giving a product review is supposed to be unbiased and neutral. From your title as a online and technology editor, I would imagine that you should have knowledge that being a journalist, you should not put your personal likings in the article itself and affect the reader. Readers read reviews to find out how good or bad a product is, and sometimes use it to determine whether or not they should purchase the product. I find your review is totally useless in this aspect.

Right at the start of the article, I already came across the line "This 16GB touchscreen phone is a beauty, but alas, it's still no iPhone", giving me the impression that you might already prefer the iphone over the reviewed product.

Secondly, if you wish to compare products, please do so in a correct manner. Compare a Windows Mobile phone with a Windows Mobile phone, not a phone running Mac OS. Even if you want to compare different OS, how come you are not comparing phones running Symbian or Linux, or even the up and coming Android?

Thirdly, I am suspecting whether you have used the phone long enough to publish a review on it? There are certain pieces of information from the article that seems to suggest that you have not really used the phone for long. Information like the motion sensing accelerometer sensitivity, and the battery life is so inaccurate, that it leads me to believe that either you did not properly try out the phone for a few days to know the functionalities and features, or simply you have no idea how to operate a Windows Mobile based phone.

As you may suspect, I am a current user of the SGH i900 Omnia, but I am definitely not biased towards it. It has its faults and flaws, but I certainly don't think that it is as worthless as you make it out to be. In short, I feel that this article to be extremely biased and should not have been published. I am very disappointed by the level of journalism project by the Today paper, as the article sounds like a well written piece from Apple fanboy bashing up a rival product.

Please review this article again and let me know if I have wrongly interpreted your intentions.

Best regards,
Peter

I spent some time reviewing this email that I wrote, making sure that I sound civil while being able to send my point across, before sending it out. I was quite eager to see if I would get a reply from the editor, and sure enough, I got an automated reply from her that made me go "Huh?! What the.."

Reply:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your feedback.

Would you like to give a line or two on what most impressed you about the Omnia? We're collating some feedback from users to be potentially published on the paper. Please also state your full name, age and designation.

Thank you.

I was thinking if this an actual response? Did she read my email at all? Was she thinking "Aiyah, another si gi na think he knows something about journalism that I don't know again ah."? In any case, since she wanted a line or two, then I give her a line or two loh.

My response:

Hi Ariel, I feel that Omnia is a device with many well integrated functionalities, with an attractive industrial design. While it is definitely not perfect, it is not as bad as you made it out to be in your review last Friday. In comparison, the iPhone is not without its own flaws too. In summary, I just want to say that if you have spent more time using the phone, you would have found out that it is quite a handy phone to have. There is no single "wow" factor for Omnia, hence I am unable to give you a line or two as to what is it about Omnia that impresses me the most. It is the combination and integration of everything in Omnia, hardware and software, that makes it a good phone. I would rather have a device with well rounded functionalities than a device that is very strong in aspect, but weak in others. That's all I have to say. If you are interested in publishing what I have to say about the phone, I'm a software engineer in my late twenties.

If my reply to her sounded pissed, that might be due to the fact the I AM pissed loh. Anyway, I wrote this expecting her not to publish anything from me, but I was wrong. On the way to work, I got a sms from my colleague that I was on the papers. I was thinking, "Ho ho ho.. What will she be writing about me? Geek Thinks He Knows Journalism? or Ignorant Bum Can Write!"

So I made my way to the office, and grabbed a copy of today's Today (pun intended :P) paper and read the article where I'm supposed to be on. Here is the article.

Anyway, this made me have a clearer understanding on how journalism work. When faced with questions to your article, just ignore the questions posed at you and get the reader who questioned you to "give a line or two to be potentially published on the paper", and get your colleague to publish a new article, totally unrelated to the previous one to try to "rectify" the first article, and Wa La! Problem solved.

And that, my friends, is journalism! :) Pete out.