Yes, There’s Rubbish Journalism In Hong Kong As Well

Despite this digital age in which we live, I still like the feeling of a newspaper in my hands. There’s something about taking a little time over a weekend breakfast, flicking pages, reading the print that feels like a welcome ritual.

However, its alarming how often that ritual is broken by basic factual errors (say nothing of bad writing) in the news articles. The newspapers in Delhi where replete with errors, some of which I put down to language and cultural issues. But here in Hong Kong, after reading the South China Morning Post for five months, I have to say I’m close to tearing my hair out.

This morning I was reading a piece of fluff on Matthew Perry, formerly of the TV series Friends (in the Sunday edition, called the Sunday Morning Post). Apparently he is back on TV now with a show called, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (yeah, whatever). Commenting on Perry’s life after Friends, the writer, one Kavita Daswani) higlighted his film work, his appearance on stage in London (in a risable production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which I had the misfortune of attending) and then went on to say “…but nothing lured him back to the small screen.”

Really?

I had seen Perry earlier that week on an episode of Scrubs (aired post-Friends) and a quick search of Perry’s IMDB profile show (the sort of thing I thought journalists did for a living) reveals two further TV appearances, one in a well rated made for TV film called The Ron Clark Story. Moreover, Perry has two feature films in production, which makes one question the “…struggled to find his feet…” line in the article.

Actually, there is probably a far more interesting piece that could have been written by Daswani, with a little more thought and a tiny bit of research. It seems Perry is trying to redefine himself, looking for some more adventurous roles, outside the obvious comedy of his first films and Friends (good for you Mr Perry!). It’s a story I would have quite enjoyed reading, instead of being pulled out of my relaxing Sunday morning routine by a display of poor fact checking.

[tags] SCMP, Matthew Perry [/tags]