A Renowned Reporter

You are a renowned news reporter and asked by your alma mater to write an article of about 250 words introducing yourself. The first paragraph should describe the best part of your job and the second paragraph should focus on the biggest challenge you have ever faced in your job.

 

     I am Chris Wong. I graduated from this school some twenty years ago. After college education, I became a news reporter and has never changed jobs ever since. The best part of my job is ample opportunity to meet people from all walks of life and report on their stories. Most of the stories are sad in that something unfortunate happened and someone was injured or even died. The other stories are often inspirational: the disadvantaged were given a helping hand or someone succeeded against all odds. I have never been tired of my job as I see it my duty to bring these stories to light in the public interest. A democratic society is characterized by press freedom and I am pleased to be able to contribute to this important cause.

 

     The biggest challenge I have ever faced in my job was when I was ten years into the job and was confronted with a dilemma where I was under tremendous pressure to disclose the identity of a news source in a controversial story. On the one hand, I had a duty to protect the identity of my informant as he had trust in me. It would be wrong of me to have reassured him of confidentiality and then failed to honor it. On the other hand, the government threatened to take me to court if I did not accede to its request for the identity. After careful consideration, I decided to stick to my principles and stood ready to defend my case in the court. Fortunately, as it turned out, I won the court case. To this date, I am still convinced that I made the right decision at that time.