Let’s Make Room for Everyone
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“1 Charles Ray Does The Work Of 10” As Western Demand Increases!
Transactional relationships
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Exploring Ethical Journalism Practices: An Interview with Ambassador Charles Ray
Mfundo Msimango, HBCU-ACC Secretary | 10 April 2023
Ambassador Charles Ray was a guest speaker to
the HBCU-Africa Correspondents Corps. Prior
to his retirement from the foreign service, he
served as the U.S. ambassador to Cambodia and
Zimbabwe.
What are the best ways for student journalists to approach
senior government officials with interview requests?
The best way to approach senior government officials is to find the email address of the agency protocol office and query them with your name, affiliation, and the reason you wish to interview the official. For retired officials, it’s a bit more difficult unless you know what organizations they might be affiliated with. In my case, for example, I am chair of the Africa
Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and can be contacted by completing the Press Contact form [on its website]. It’s helpful if you are as detailed as possible in your query regarding the specific areas you have questions about.
What are the expectations that senior government officials
have of student journalists when they are conducting
interviews? Are they different from those of seasoned
journalists?
Most senior officials will not expect student journalists to be as savvy as a seasoned journalist, but they will nonetheless expect the same degree of professionalism, e.g., understanding the rules on things like off the record, not for attribution, etc. They will also expect professional demeanor and conduct, such as being properly dressed, being on time, etc.
What are the ethical and moral challenges that student
journalists might encounter when interviewing senior
government officials? How should they mitigate them?
The challenges, really, are the same that journalists face when interviewing any subject. Being honest with your questions and intent (there are some minor exceptions when doing investigative pieces), and being honest about what you plan to write. Also, honoring commitments. For example, if you’re told something ‘off the record,’ to help you better understand a situation, you must not use that information in your article.
How should a student journalist prepare to conduct a one-on-one interview with a senior government official on national security or foreign policy? Are there any tricks of the trade?
Prepare your questions well in advance. Many officials will, in fact, ask for the questions in advance of the interview date, so they can be prepared with the appropriate information, get the required clearances and approvals, etc. Have an idea of how you plan to write your article, and prepare your questions accordingly. If during the interview, an answer causes you to think of a question that wasn’t on your list, explain that and ask it, keeping in mind
that the interviewee is under no obligation to answer. As a student journalist, my advice is to avoid ‘gotcha’ questions, no matter how tempting it might be. This is a good way to get an interview terminated and your name flagged as someone not to talk to in the future. Tricks of the trade? Listen actively and take good notes. If you wish to record, get the interviewee’s okay in advance. If you’re told no recording devices—which is often the case in some government offices—honor that restriction, and use your mind and a sharp pencil.
Don’t be afraid to ask for a repeat of anything you didn’t catch clearly, to make sure you get it right.
There are a lot of competing needs when it comes to
conducting interviews with senior government officials (e.g.,
privacy; security; transparency; openness; truthfulness). How
should student journalists balance those needs?
The same way you would with a relative or friend, or any other person. In interviews with government officials, you’ll be told if something impinges on security, so honor that, as there are legal implications to dealing with classified or sensitive information. Everyone is entitled to personal privacy, even public officials to a degree (although less than a private citizen). Be solicitous of your interviewee’s privacy and you’ll earn their respect and gratitude. As to transparency, openness, and truthfulness, these are things that you, as a journalist, should always be.
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Let’s make room for everyone
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Black History Month – US Consul General, Ho Chi Minh City
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Charles Ray Meets Demand For New Westerns With “Badge For Hire”
January 17, 2024|Authors, DSP Articles
For many authors, one series is enough and keeps them extremely busy each month. For Charles Ray, four or five series at one time is no sweat at all. Each month Charles turns out a new book for each of his Western series—and today we will see the release of “Badge For Hire,” the latest book in his “Adventures of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves.” Tomorrow, perhaps, we will see the release of a new book in his “Caleb Johnson: Mountain Man” series. It’s all go in the world of Charles Ray, from managing many of the authors involved in the “Gone To Texas” series through to co-writing a horror series. He’s just a one-man band of achievement, and after reading “Badge For Hire” you will see that he doesn’t just produce—he produces the best quality material. That’s why he consistently ranks within the top one hundred bestselling Western novels—usually towards the top of the list too. What can we say? He’s one of the most talented and you’ll love “Badge For Hire.”
What Is “Badge For Hire” About?
Bass is given a stack of warrants for fugitives to capture, but this time there’s a difference. One of the fugitives is a deputy marshal suspected of accepting bribes to look the other way for an outlaw gang. Bass, a strong believer in following the law, feels that lawmen should be held to an even higher standard than everyone else, and even though there’s no reward for bringing in the crooked deputy, he’s happy to take the case. The law might not be perfect, he thinks, but it’s a lot better than no law at all, and when those charged with enforcing the law fail to respect it, it’s getting too close to there being no law.
Along with his friend, Henry Lone Tree, Bass and his posse roam Indian Territory from the Creek Nation to Fort Sill and the Comanche/Kiowa Nation, rounding up those who would walk on the wrong side of the law.
Where Can I Get My Copy?
“Badge For Hire” is available now from Amazon!
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Don’t blame AI
Since the launch of Chat-GPT, followed by several clones, mimics, improvements, and other artificial intelligence (AI) applications, there’s been a raft of articles and editorials on the subject, some of them going so far as to present doomsday scenarios, predicting that if unchecked AI will take over the world and destroy us. On the less frantic, but no less of a hair-on-fire attitude, are predictions that AI will make certain human workers obsolete, and will retard learning because students will no longer know how to do research or even write their own essays.
Now, there is a certain amount of validity to the latter two opinions. There are likely to be some jobs that are better, more efficiently and cheaply done by AI rather than humans. But I predict that these will be the drudge, number crunching jobs that most humans hate doing anyway, and a computer can crunch numbers faster and more accurately than the smartest human. There will still be, though, a requirement for humans to make the decisions about what to do with those crunched numbers. As for the impact on students, if educators abdicate their responsibility to set clear standards and requirements and monitor their students’ activities, there could be situations where students ‘let the AI do it,’ thus not acquiring research and communication skills of their own. I teach online graduate courses in geopolitics, for example, and I use AI for baseline grading—with extensive manual input from me—which frees me to focus on students having problems, and to have the time to carefully review their written assignments. I forbid my students from using AI to write their essays, and caution them when using AI to do research to verify everything the AI provides them, preferably with at least one or two non-AI sources. Properly used, AI can be an aid in compiling sources for further study, and for establishing outlines of projects.
Because AI, like human researchers, is pulling the information it provides from Internet searches, it can sometimes be wrong, just as a human researcher who doesn’t try to verify what pops up on the screen in a search can be wrong. A good example in the news recently was Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer having to admit that in a court filing he submitted some phony legal cases that had been provided by an AI. You can’t blame the AI for this. Depending on how he worded his search, it provided relevant cases that it found in searching the Internet, but the Internet is like an open shelf, anyone with a computer can put anything on it. If you grab things off the shelf without examining them closely, you—or the AI—just might get the wrong thing.
So, let’s stop blaming the AI for things going wrong. AI is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used or misused. Don’t blame the tool, blame the mechanic.
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The Phenomenon Of Western Hitmaker Charles Ray
December 14, 2023|Authors, DSP Articles
The year 2023 has been an exceptional one for Western hitmaker Charles Ray. His books have continued to please Western readers around the world, with many of them placing inside the top one hundred bestseller chart and putting smiles on the faces of fans of Old West fiction. His philosophy of using a “rotation” strategy to bring readers three different books each month, continuing his three most successful series, has proven to be a solid strategy and only one that an author of immense concentration, drive and charisma could pull off.
“Texas Ranger J.D. Pettit,” “Jacob Blade: Vigilante,” and “Caleb Johnson: Mountain Man” are all booming brands for Ray, with readers constantly waiting for the next book in the series. The work that Charles puts into these series make them must-read, addictive reading.
Hard work makes for a lot of the Ray success—he’s always working on that next book. Rarely a week goes by without a new Charles Ray adventure, and readers love that consistency. Often we get emails asking about the next Caleb Johnson—his most popular series—and we can always assure the reader that the next adventure is literally just around the corner.
Even with his own busy personal schedule, he manages to keep his readers entertained—and in a business where people’s personal lives often intrude into their writing lives, Charles shines as an example of separating his writing from his business life, never letting either down.
So, what is next for Charles Ray? Well, more of the same, of course. In 2024, he will continue his rotation. As long as the world keeps spinning, we will keep seeing brand new adventures from the very talented Mr. Ray. In fact, there’s one on the way right now—“Rusty Rhodes: Bounty Hunter: The Bone Wars.” You see, as this article was written, he wrote another book!
