你可能覺得奇怪！我不是介紹書櫃中的藏書，為什麼會介紹一份報紙？因為在爸爸的閱讀習慣中，南華早報（South China Morning Post – SCMP）都佔著一個很重要的地位。所以，我都要介紹給你。

SCMP在香港創刊，至今己有過百年，是香港英文報章中的翘楚。在中學，英文老師都會要求學生閱讀英文報紙，因此，我便開始接觸SCMP。中學時期的讀SCMP，主要是為學好英文。還記得初中的時候，老師要我們一星期做一篇英文剪報。剛剛閱讀英文報紙，的確有一點難度，很多英文生字都不懂，要經常查字典，做一篇短短的報導都吃力。日子悠了，字彙學多了，就沒有那麼吃力了。到高中的時候，要應付入大學的考試。本身的英文不太好，要急起直追，所以，我就強迫自己毎天讀英文報紙，做筆記，學生字，毎天都花上一至兩小時看SCMP，天天看，天天做，開始有了閱讀SCMP的習慣，英文能力也有了很大的進步。

讀英文報紙是一個最佳學習英文的方法，因為你所看的報導內容，跟你的生活息息相關，你不會陌生，學習起來就不會悶。SCMP是最合適用來學習英文，當中英語的用法及詞彙，可以說是全亞洲中的最高水平之一。

英文並不是學校一個學科這麼簡單，它是一種工具，可以令你連接世界，知古通今。在大學的時候，你需要去造學問，自己去圖書館搜收資料，很多時都需要看一些西方的英文書籍。很多時候翻譯出來的版本跟原來的意義有不同，你必須看原著，才能領悟果中的意義。另外，在現今互聯網的世界，英文為主要的共通語言，你可以尋找所有事物，即時知道世界另一邊發生什麼事。

A letter from the editors

 

We read the Hong Kong Standard’s report on A2, “Self-Censorship whiff in ‘locust’ ban” with surprise.

For those who missed it, the senior South China Morning Post editors decided to issue guidance to our newsroom on the use of emotive words, specifically the term “locust”, a patently offensive term used by a group of Hong Kong protesters to describe mainland Chinese.

The Standard wrote about our decision on Wednesday (Feb 26), postulating that it may have been driven by self-censorship and quoted an academic who interpreted our move as being too sensitive.

Both are wrong. Our guidance is simply good, responsible, basic journalism.

We thought we would share with readers the guidance so you can be clear of our intentions:

“We started from the position that the SCMP stands for responsible journalism which is free from bias. We do not stereotype, we do not tolerate bigotry or prejudice and we do not use racial epithets.

“The term ‘locust’ is clearly being employed as a slur and there is no reason for such inflammatory language to routinely feature on our news file and risk becoming seen as SCMP-endorsed shorthand to describe people from the mainland.

“Our decision to allow use of the word only when absolutely necessary, for instance if it appears in a direct quote essential to the story, is simply a matter of basic journalism. Using emotive words sparingly and taking a neutral, balanced approach to such issues is what we are all taught as trainees.

“Sticking to fair, factual and objective reporting of the most sensitive and emotionally-charged issues that affect our readers is vital to our ability to retain our hard-earned reputation as a responsible, impartial, even-handed news organisation.”

We already employed the policy to handle slurs against other ethnic and religious groups. We simply expanded it to cover another epithet.

Our policy is not being “overwhelmingly sensitive” to mainlanders, as the assistant professor quoted by the Standard put it. It is not about self-censorship. It is about fairness, tolerance and balance.

We suggest the Hong Kong Standard and other local news organisations who printed similar articles review their own policies towards racial epithets and hate speech.

 

With kind regards,

The Editors