The Internet’s central villain: Farhad Manjo asks what is the driving force behind much of the chaos and disrepute online?
“This isn’t that hard,” he writes. “You don’t need a crazy wall to figure it out, because the force to blame has been quietly shaping the contours of life online since just about the beginning of life online: It’s the advertising business, stupid.”
Opioid crisis collateral damage is a lesson for journalists, writes Byard Duncan.
Many states hit hard by the opioid crisis also are seeing a spike in foster care placements. In most cases, the broad designation of “substance abuse” is all that gets logged by social workers.
“Sometimes the information we don’t have is even more important than what we know,” writes Duncan. Think about who else is affected, keep an open mind.
Crusading high school journalists: Students learn that a popular history teacher is fired for misconduct, writes Eli Rosenberg.
The story is deleted from the newspaper website by school leaders. The students created their own website, the Herriman Telegram, and republished the story. Their slogan: “Student run. No censorship.”
Correcting Twitter mistakes with transparency: Steven Potter tells how Thomson Reuters and the Associated Press correct Twitter mistakes.
“We don’t believe that an incorrect tweet should just be deleted without any further comment,” says a Thomson Reuters source. “To us, that would be lack of accountability.”
Robots can write, but are they ethical?
Paul Chadwick writes about how artificial intelligence could damage public trust in journalism.
“For the time being, (ethics) codes could simply require that when AI is used the journalists turn their minds to whether the process overall has been compatible with fundamental human values,” he writes.
Covering a time span of 84 years, iMediaEthics releases its annual report on the top media ethics issues.
Leading the list, writes Sydney Smith, is behavior in the workplace — the explosive story of top media figures who lost their jobs because of sexual misconduct.
In tenth place, the Associated Press releases a yearlong review into its working relationship with Nazis in Germany before World War Two.
New poll, same results: Public trust in the media is at an all-time low.
Knight-Gallup survey shows Americans can’t name an objective news source.
Half of Americans say more news sources make it harder to be informed.
Concern over “fake news” is high.
Avoiding Twitter snafus: Sydney Smith says tweets caused media and staffers problems in 2017.
Among them: Old tweets, hoax or parody Twitter accounts, false tweets, tweets that cost jobs, flippant tweets and racist or anti-Semitic tweets.
Basic digital security competence is now essential for all journalists, writes Joshua Oliver.
“These days, bad security habits could betray your sources, or the sources of the reporter sitting next to you,” by clicking the wrong link.
Journalism schools surveyed devote less than two hours to digital security training, writes Oliver. Security should become a habit.
Rumors, misinformation and fake news: Craig Silverman says he helped popularize the term “fake news” and now regrets it.
Silverman and colleagues published an analysis of 50 of the biggest fake news hits on Facebook in 2017.
“This highlights the challenge faced by Facebook to find ways to halt or arrest the spread of completely false stories on its platform, and raises questions about how much progress has been made in fighting this type of misinformation.”
Facebook “remains the home of massively viral hoaxes,” says Silverman.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 