All men should take a stand to curtail the shenanigans and misconduct by fellow males and at all-male occasions, writes Joe Hight.
“We as males should emphasize the importance of treating women and everyone civilly and with respect. We should pledge never to condone, participate in or hide blatant sexual misconduct. That’s what a man would do.”
European advocates for free speech and press are worried, writes Mathew Ingram.
“France, Germany and the United Kingdom are all either discussing or are already in the process of implementing requirements for social networks to take measures to remove or block online hate speech, harassment and so-called ‘fake news'” considered threats to social order.
America’s First Amendment protects even hateful speech.
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.
International coverage of gender and power: Pete Vernon writes about BuzzFeed News’s global women’s rights and gender reporter.
Women spend much of their lives and energy preparing against being attacked by a stranger, she says, when in fact more than 95 percent of the time we are violated by people we know.
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.
Touchy subject — using the term “racist” while covering President Trump.
“Placing labels on speech by any public figure runs the risk of editorialization, and newsroom decision makers are wary of overstepping conventional norms,” writes Pete Vernon.
Bottom line: It’s time reporters do what columnists and opinion writers do, says Vernon.
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.
On the whole, the world is getting better, writes Bill Gates, Time Magazine’s first-ever guest editor.
“To some extent, it is good that bad news gets attention,” he writes. “If you want to improve the world, you need something to be mad about. But it has to be balanced by upsides. When you see good things happening, you can channel your energy into driving even more progress.”
Bad news arrives as drama while good news is incremental — and not usually deemed newsworthy, he writes.
Apologies to the seven-foot-tall hairy alien biped community: Sydney Smith lists the top ten media corrections of 2017, including a correction of a correction.
What to do when the subject of a sex investigation dies by suicide: There’s no playbook for journalists about how to handle situations like that, writes Meg Dalton, about a Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and Louisville Public Media podcast revealing the troubled past of a prominent political and religious figure.
The case “is an exemplar not only of dogged local reporting, but also a how-to for newsrooms grappling with unexpected ramifications,” writes Dalton, such as the death of a subject.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 