Using drones in journalism: Newsrooms need policies on using drones, according to a Center for Journalism Ethics report.
“While news organizations and individual journalists are safely integrating drones into their daily operations, as well as the national airspace, it is crucial to remember that this evolving technology still faces many regulatory and legislative hurdles, not to mention privacy issues and ethical concerns,” says the report.
Liar’s dividend explained: Exposing lies can have an unsettling backlash, writes Kelly McBride.
“Debunking fake or manipulated material like videos, audios or documents ultimately could stoke belief in the fakery,” she writes, making it harder for the public to trust the media. Collaboration by media could help.
Philanthropy boosts western media: A journalism collaboration stretching from Montana to New Mexico focuses on rural issues and Native American stories, writes Christine Schmidt.
A partnership started in 2015 aims to make local newspapers and TV stations useful sources of information.
Media covering their own scandals: Sex scandals in 2017 and 2018 brought down top media figures, forcing outlets to report about themselves.
Organizations faced questions of how sexual harassment and assault could fester unaddressed, writes Claudia Meyer-Samargia.
“But for individual journalists, particularly those who cover news media, questions focused on how they could cover these cases ethically, with the right balance of truth-telling, transparency and respect for privacy.” Protecting an organization’s reputation is an issue.
Opinion in the news: It’s a split decision when RAND looked at media objectivity, reports Laura Hazard Owen.
Journalism became more subjective over time, she writes. But it depends on the type of journalism.
“Newspapers reporting remains much as it was before the Web — but both TV and online news rely more heavily on emotion, personal experiences and argument.”
Journalists a rare sighting: The Pew Research Center finds 21 percent of Americans never spoke with a local journalist, writes Elizabeth Grieco.
Americans who have spoken with a journalist are a bit more likely than those who have not to say local news media do a very good job.
Parting company with Facebook: Journalists working with the giant tech platform is a Faustian bargain, writes Mathew Ingram: “The benefits of doing business with Facebook don’t begin to outweigh the ethical compromises required to do so.”
Ingram asks: “How much of what you are doing serves (Facebook’s) interests rather than yours, or the interests of journalism, or society in general?”
Identifying who funds studies: iMediaEthics reports on NPR’s efforts to identify conflicts of interest because many journal studies end up hidden behind a paywall and readers can’t always find the source material.
Covering mental health: Do more stories on successful mental health treatment, advises Kelly McBride.
Often experts are wrong. Ask how they know that’s the right term, she writes.
It’s the ads, stupid!: Warren Buffett tells Yahoo Finance that “ads are news to people.”
News is “what you don’t know that you want to know says the finance wizard in a report by Sam Ro. People already know what happened in sports, politics and the stock market. Advertising fat cats win. Others vanish.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 