Janet Cooke’s world: Every student journalist should know about Cooke, the only reporter ever forced to return a Pulitzer Prize because her story about an eight-year-old heroin addict was a hoax.
Bill Green, the Washington Post’s ombudsman, wrote a blistering report on the Post’s editorial lapses that is a model of journalism accountability. It set the standard for ombudsmen. From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Reporting data with integrity: Journalists trust data to support conclusions, but they can make wrong guesses about what the data meant, writes Stephen Rynkiewicz.
Ask if data are accurate, timely and relevant, he writes.
From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Women in journalism: Women journalists in particular contend with unwanted presumptions, sexual harassment and the threat of gender-based violence, reports the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
“Listen to your internal radar.”
From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Journalists in love: A California newspaper editor says one of his reporters is having an affair with the mayor of a town the paper covers. What to do? From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Public trust in leaders: Pew Research Center finds Americans have varying degrees of confidence in those who hold important positions of power and responsibility.
Public school principals, military leaders and police officers rank high in confidence. Religious leaders, journalists and local elected officials rank low.
Google wins global privacy case: In a French court, Google agreed to delete search results for a person in Europe only, but not in the rest of the world.
A European court agrees, setting a standard that one country’s internet rules cannot be imposed on other countries.
Ethics of purging from news archives: A California editor says people want old stories about them removed from web archives.
Ethicist David Ozar says the first issue is what benefit archives offer a community as an historical record. From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Vanishing copy editors: Copy editors were among the first to be axed in the internet mass communications revolution, writes Rosie DiManno.
“It is wacko, to me, that newspapers — where accuracy and clean content have always been of utmost importance — would view copy editors as expendable. The upshot has been disastrous.”
Broadcast transparency: Knight-Cronkite News Lab study finds that showing the process of reporting a story increased trust in broadcast news.
Secret to earning audience trust is “show your work.”
Defining conflict of interest: There’s no single definition, writes Nancy Matchett. It’s an “open concept.” “It is a reason why ethical professionals sensibly seek advice from time to time.” From the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists archives.
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 