Posts for 'Journalism Ethics' Category

Journalism relies on public trust, and trust between individual journalists and their sources. Without trust, the Media Alliance's Code of Ethics reminds us, journalists do not fulfill their public responsibilities.

Events of the last few days have seen such trust take a significant hit. Reporter Matt De Groot of 2UE went to air on Wednesday citing the Immigration Minister Chris Evans telling a conference of experts at the University of New South Wales that the boat people issue was "killing the government". As well, De Groot reported, Evans said "his greatest failure" had been his inability to lead an informed community debate on asylum seekers.

Read the complete story

When I was editor-in-chief of Spare Change News from 2003 to 2007, one of my reporters made a phone call that, in ret­ro­spect, proved to be quite inter­est­ing. But more on that soon.

Our writer emer­i­tus Jeff Guevin for­warded me this Salon arti­cle in which Glenn Green­wald com­ments on the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing a recent arti­cle that led to U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama fir­ing the gen­eral in charge of the war in Afghanistan:

With his Rolling Stone arti­cle on Gen. [Stan­ley] McChrys­tal, Michael Hast­ings has become both the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of, and spokesper­son for, Real Jour­nal­ism, and as a result, has pro­voked intense ani­mos­ity from establishment-serving “reporters” every­where.

He appar­ently com­mit­ted the gravest sin:  he exposed and embar­rassed rather than flat­tered and pro­tected a pow­er­ful gov­ern­ment offi­cial, and in our upside-down media cul­ture, doing that is a sign of irre­spon­si­bil­ity rather than ful­fill­ment of the basic jour­nal­is­tic function.

Read the complete story

Six journalists of the state including the editor of Hueiyen Lanpao (English edition), Brozendra Ningomba were awarded the Manipur State Journalists' Award, 2008 in connection with the Information and Public Relations Day observance held at the office complex of DIPR located at Moirangkhom this morning. Editor of Hueiyen Lanpao (English edition), Brozendra Ningomba was awarded the Best Editor's Award.

This is the second time Brozendra Ningomba bagged the State Journalist Award. To his credit, he had previously won the award in 2005.He has been awarded for his editorial writings on national integrity and communal harmony.

Read the complete story

Down is the new up. Nazi is the new black. Jon Stewart is the new Walter Cronkite. No, really. In a Time magazine poll this summer, 44 percent of Americans voted Stewart America’s best newsman.  Yes, they voted a comedian who breaks news at the wee hour of 11 p.m. in front of an empty newsroom America’s best newsman. It’s like saying you are better off with Letterman’s monologue than the 6 p.m. news, which you are.

I’m not here to champion Stewart, as there are so many doing so already, but rather to officially pronounce objective news as we once knew it dead. The political divide in this country is so vast now, that Americans aren’t interested in objective news.

This is why Fox News is the most watched cable news station and The Huffington Post is practically the only Web site that makes money: Americans don’t want to hear the other side’s viewpoints, they want to turn on the television and be told their beliefs are right.

Read the complete story

It has been a hectic last few months for the Minnesota Vikings — mostly due to that guy who used to play in the state to the right of us. At the time of this writing, Brett Favre was still contemplating whether to join the Vikings as their new starting quarterback or not.

There was speculation he would make an announcement sometime on Friday. Realistically, he probably has until Thursday, July 29, before he has to commit one way or the other. As much as the Vikings seem to want him, it’s not likely Vikings’ head coach Brad Childress will welcome Favre aboard after training camp has begun.

If the ‘Favre Saga’ has shown anything over the last few months, it has revealed how the news-reporting business has changed since we entered the new millennium nine years ago. Rumors, innuendoes, gossip, and even the occasional fact have taken on a life of their own when they’ve sprouted up on Facebook pages or Twitter accounts or somebody’s personal blog or talk show.

Read the complete story

A business journalist that I know contacted me this morning with the following scenario. He wanted to know if what happened was an ethical problem for his publication. I have deleted the names of the company and the publication involved.Here is the journalist’s explanation:“The handful of people working on the story were funneling information through the Web editor. (It usually goes through me first, but again, deadline pressure.) So the editor who had talked to this source at [the company] passed along the information to the Web editor, who in turn put a story up without my seeing it.

Read the complete story

Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon’s Editorial office of Publications just launched the book “Didactica de la Entrevista de Prensa” by Dr. Jose Luis Esquivel Hernandez, with support of Manuel Buendia Foundation, which edits each two months the Revista Mexicana de Comunicacion.

Other titles of his vast production are: “Periodismo Noticioso en diez lecciones,” Los diez mandamientos del Periodismo,” los “Siete Pecados Capitales del Periodismo,” “25 Cronicas Profanas,” “Cronicas de fin de siglo,” “Historia de la prensa,” “La Prensa diaria de España,” “La Prensa de Estados Unidos,” “Perfil biografico de Armando Fuentes Aguirre,” Julio Scherer Garcia: de Excelsior a Proceso, un grito de libertad,” “Vicente Leñero por Vicente Leñero,” “La Entrevista de Creación: Gabriel Garcia Marquez en cuatro tiempos,” “Manual del Reportaje: el Rey del Periodismo,” “El Norte: Lider sin competencias,” and “Historia del Grupo Reforma.”

Read the complete story

Our active comment sections here at globeandmail.com prove there is no shortage of opinion and debate when it comes to ethics and journalism. Now a former UBC prof working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has launched a site inviting discussion on the topic of journalism ethics both here and south of the border.

Professor Stephen J.A. Ward, the director of the Centre for Journalism Ethics, can be found looking for feedback here. "I invite you to enjoy and use the site for your media courses, your journalistic work, or for your own information as a member of the public," he writes. "There has never been a more impotent time for all citizens to examine and debate the ethics of journalism, locally, nationally and globally." Let's hope he meant to say "important."

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a minister returning to the seminary, an officer back at the academy, an old ballplayer joining the rookies for another spring training. I'm at a journalism school talking to young people and they are affirming the faith: the thrill of chasing a story, the queasy high of deadline, the satisfaction of getting it first and the enduring hope it all might matter.

Those forces may be intangible, but they're powerful enough to lighten an old news hound's heart and to keep pumping up enrollment at journalism schools, even as newspapers fold, TV slashes reporters and radio outlets combine staffs.

Applications jumped more than 20% this year for the graduate journalism program at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism got 44% more applicants this year than in 2008. Other J-schools reported similar increases.

Read the complete story

The Washington Times' news gathering is about to become a whole lot bigger as the newspaper launches one full print page per day of news stories reported and written by average citizens in local communities.

The citizen journalism project, set to debut Monday, is a new take on a traditional idea. Community-driven news has been a long mainstay in American newspapers. The Times' version ramps up the intensity and the outreach, focusing on six communities within the larger Washington area: academia on Monday, the Maryland and Virginia suburbs on Tuesday, the District on Wednesday, local military bases on Thursday, faith communities on Friday and the charitable and the public service community on Sunday.

Read the complete story