“60 Minutes” Trips on Truth

Accountability, Accuracy, Fabrication, , , , ,

By Casey Bukro

“60 Minutes” built a towering reputation as the TV news magazine that gets it right, but now is apologizing for getting it wrong in its report about the terrorist attack last year on the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libyan port city of Benghazi.

Lara Logan, who reported the story, said it was a mistake to highlight a supposed eyewitness account of the attack by a security contractor who later was found to be lying about being at the scene of the attack, and seeing the body of U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens at a local hospital.

“We made a mistake, and that’s very disappointing for any journalist,” said Logan.

The mistake involves an interview with Dylan Davies, a security contractor whose firm worked for the U.S. government, who was identified by “60 Minutes” by his pseudonym, Morgan Jones. He gave Logan a dramatic account of his role in fighting the terrorists, even smashing a terrorist in the face with a rifle butt. Logan appeared to coach him in describing the encounter.

“It was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry,” she is quoted in a New York Times story.

Actually, Davies/Jones told FBI investigators and his employer that he never left his villa the night of the attack because it was too dangerous. He did not visit the attack scene until the next morning. The conflicting government report caused the “60 Minutes” report to unravel.

From a journalist’s point of view, one can wonder about the CBS report, admittedly in retrospect. Why was Davies allowed to use a fake name on camera? And was any attempt made to prove that Davies was at the attack scene or at the local hospital, as he alleged?

The Times reported that CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager called the Logan report “as big a mistake” as “60 Minutes” has made in its 45-year history, but that its televised apology would be its last word on the issue.

This is seen as a “defensive crouch” by a news organization with a hard-hitting reputation and little pity for those caught in its cross-hairs. Fager also is executive producer of “60 Minutes.”

Marvin Kalb, a former CBS news correspondent, said in Politico.com that an apology from CBS is not enough.

“What has CBS learned, if anything?” asks Kalb, a senior adviser to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Following the apologies, said Kalb, “perhaps CBS (and other networks, too) will engage in a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred self-analysis of its reporting standards, starting one hopes with the unholy alliance it has formed with book publishers pushing their hot exclusives,” he wrote.

Davies/Jones had a book deal with Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS’s parent corporation.

If an apology is all CBS News can muster, clearly it is not being as tough on itself as it is on others.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages journalists to “abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.”

On the upside, “60 Minutes” admitted its mistake and apologized, a rarity in TV journalism.  SPJ says “admit mistakes and correct them promptly.” The admission phase is done; the correction remains to be seen.

Later, CBS announced that Logan and her producer were placed on leave of absence.

In a memo to staff, Fager wrote that he asked Logan and Max McClellan, the producer, to take a leave of absence, which they agreed to do.

“When faced with a such an error, we must use it as an opportunity to make our broadcast even stronger,” Fager wrote. “We are making adjustments at 60 Minutes to reduce the chances of it happening again.”

As executive producer, Fager said, “I am responsible for what gets on the air.”

Ombudsmen a Global Growth Industry

Accountability, Compassion, Juveniles, Media, Photos, , , , , ,

By Casey Bukro

The Washington Post’s decision early this year to dump its ombudsman got a lot of attention, but a global growth in the ranks of ombudsmen as a step toward development has gone largely unnoticed.

“This growth reflects a belief in young or fragile democracies that strong media play a critical role in development,” reports “themediaonline,” most notably in Latin America.

“Themediaonline” report was based on “Giving the Public a Say: How News Ombudsmen Ensure Accountability, Build Trust and Add Value to Media Organizations” It was published by fesmedia Africa, a media project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Namibia, Africa. FES is a nongovernment, nonprofit foundation that promotes democratization and good governance.

An Argentine academic said the work of ombudsmen “demands our attention.”

In Africa, according to the report, ombudsmen organizations play an important role in fending off government interference. Instead of working for news media, ombudsmen in other parts of the world might operate as voluntary associations.

Africa has become a hotbed of ombudsman activity.

Complaints to a press ombudsman in the Johannesburg area jumped 224 percent since 2009, according to a report at the South Africa Editors’ Forum at Umhlanga, Africa.

Johan Retief, deputy press ombudsman of Print Media South Africa, said his organization received 151 complaints from aggrieved newspaper readers and newsmakers in 2009, and the tally is expected to reach 490 in 2013. PMSA is described as a nonprofit voluntary association with a membership of 700 newspapers and magazines in four languages.

Greater numbers of complaints to the ombudsman organization have been laid to growing public awareness of the organization’s public advocate role and its effectiveness in dealing with complaints about inaccurate or unfair newspaper reporting, according to IOLnews.

The newspaper industry’s previous system of self-regulation came under attack as “toothless,” and the governing African National Congress threatened to create a statutory tribunal to hear complaints. That was avoided by a stronger stance by the ombudsmen.

For example, Press Ombudsman Retief ordered the Daily Sun newspaper to publish a front page apology for front page color photos of the bodies of people killed in mob attacks.

Complainants said the pictures were insensitive, dehumanizing, inconsiderate, caused discomfort to society and lacked compassion, according to a report in the Mail & Guardian.

The photos published in October and November also raised concerns that they exposed society, including children, to extreme violence and desensitized people to violent crimes.

News or Painful Reminders?

Juveniles, Media, Minimizing Harm, ,

By Casey Bukro

News media were divided on whether the the 911 audio recordings in the Newtown, Conn. shootings a year ago that left 26 dead were newsworthy.

That might say something about the ethical sophistication with which the media are judging the news.

Adam Lanza, 20, went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, and fatally shot 20 children and six educators before killing himself. Earlier, Lanza had killed his mother at home.

A year after the shootings, a Connecticut judge ruled that the 911 audio recordings of the event should be released.

“There’s still shooting going on. Please!” said a caller, identified as Custodian Rick Thorne, who was among those  who could be heard pleading for help.

CNN and Fox News broadcast parts of the recordings. CBS said it would use some audio clips. ABC and NBC decided against broadcasting or posting any of the recordings.

Many local residents and officials were against broadcasting the clips.

“I don’t understand the reasoning for the general public to hear them,” said Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, a Sandy Hook first-grade teacher who survived the attack. “The families, they’ve already experienced such immeasurable pain and loss and sadness.”

These are the sort of decisions confronting news organizations at most disasters, weighing the benefit and harm of reporting details, sights and sounds.

The Sandy Hook 911 phone calls reveal the voices of scared callers, a calm and efficient 911 dispatcher and shots in the background. There are no screams or voices of children.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s senior legal analyst, said it could be argued that the audio reports served a public service by showing how the 911 call-taker handled the calls.  Most of the callers were calm. Toobin believed the contents of the tapes were not as disturbing as the event they represented.

The shootings also were a major event in U.S. history, coming at a time when Congress was considering gun-control measures.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages journalists to “minimize harm.”

Some local residents always are likely to see what the media do as intrusive.

Reuters reported that a hand-painted sign had been fastened to telephone pole saying:  “Vulture media, you got your tapes. Please leave.”

Eventually, the reporters do leave. Seldom is any thought given to the emotional toll they take with them after seeing the slaughter of children.

Looking At Transparency

Media, , , , , ,

By Casey Bukro
Two views emerged on transparency in journalism, one strongly in favor and the other not so much.
Transparency now trumps “act independently” as a guiding journalism principle in ethics decision-making because anyone with a computer might be considered a journalist these days, according to Tom Rosenstiel, executive of the American Press Institute.
“Transparency will pull publishers of information toward best practices and also toward the most important kind of independence — intellectual independence,” writes Rosenstiel.
Rosenstiel points to a new book published by the Poynter Institute, “The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century,” in which this shift in guiding principles is explained and promoted. Rosenstiel contributed to the book, which attempts to update a set of ethics principles.
Not so fast says Stephen Ward, who suggests transparency is “over-hyped and replaces important values.”
Ward is a journalism professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.
Transparency too often “is a magical idea,” Ward insists. “I believe independence should remain a principle of ethical journalism, and not be demoted to a secondary principle, or made a part of some other principle.”
As for the Poynter ethics book, Ward said: “it is better to talk of reforming the idea of independence, not of replacing it.”
“Academic studies indicate that transparency cannot meet our expectations,” Ward insists, although he did not cite any of the studies.
Rosenstiel said the new Poynter ethics book attempts to update a set of ethical guidelines developed by Poynter in the 1990s under the leadership of Bob Steele, now director of the of DePauw University’s Prindle Institute for Ethics.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics also urges journalists to “act independently.”

Mr. Fix-It Eyes Jeff Bezos

Accountability, Independence, Media, , ,

By Casey Bukro

Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader says he is speaking for longtime readers of the Washington Post when he asks how independent the newspaper will be under Jeff Bezos’ ownership.

In an open letter to the Post, Nader says the public has been treated to profiles depicting the new boss’s business successes and his personal style and demeanor.

“What we have not been told is how the newspaper is going to shield itself from Mr. Bezos’ far-flung business interests in order to maintain reader credibility and trust,” Nader wrote.

Nader is known for his bulldog tenacity in making corporate leaders sweat over consumer issues like environmental protection and auto safety. He has some advice for Bezos, who acquired ownership of the Washington Post in a $250 million deal in which he would become sole owner of the newspaper and its publishing company.

“Mr. Bezos would do well to reestablish the longtime ombudsman post which was abolished in March of this year, presumably to save money,” wrote Nader. “For an ombudsman’s role is not just to be an internal critic at the paper but also to be the reader’s coherent voice on the ways the Washington Post is being managed.”

The Post in March said the ombudsman would be replaced by a reader representative, ending a 43-year practice of employing an ombudsman who wrote a long-standing Sunday column.

At the time, Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth wrote that the ombudsman’s “duties are as critical today as ever. Yet it is time that the way these duties are performed evolves.”

An Unattended Death Puts Newsroom to Test

Compassion, Minimizing Harm, , ,

By Lee Anne Peck

Should a news organization publish a dead man’s earlier prison sentence? A 36-year-old man, Kevin Benham, was discovered drowned by hikers in a wilderness area. The hikers tried to revive him but were unsuccessful. Benham’s death was ruled “unattended, ” and the coroner reported the death was not a suicide.

Benham had Huntington’s Disease, which is a hereditary, degenerative brain disorder; this disease has no cure. Take note: The disease also slowly diminishes a person’s ability to reason, walk and talk.  Benham’s biological mother and two brothers died from Huntington’s. The coroner noted that Benham most likely died from the disease.

As a reporter from the Adriondack Daily Enterprise began researching background information for a story and obituary on Benham, he came across information that Benham had served eight years in an Arizona prison for kidnapping a woman. He was also listed as a sexual predator. Benham’s lawyer had told the court about his client’s disease and tried to explain this is why Benham had kidnapped the girl.

After Benham served his sentence, he had returned home a year ago from Arizona.

Managing Editor Peter Crowley and his staff struggled with whether to print that information in the Sept. 26, 2013, afternoon edition  of the newspaper.  The story had already been published online without the prison sentence.

When I talked with Crowley, we discussed what his staff’s professional values were.  What good would printing the information do if Benham was already gone? What harm would happen to those who were left (his adopted family)?

The rival paper, The (Plattsburgh) Press Republican, did print the prison sentence and also reported that Benham had been registered locally as a sex offender.

In the end, the Daily Enterprise never did print the prison sentence information. I told Crowley I agreed with him:  The reporting of the prison sentence would serve no purpose at this point.

See how two competing newspapers covered this same story:

Link to Adirondack Daily Enterprise:
http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/539095/Police-identify-local-man-who-died-in-High-Peaks.html?nav=5008
The Press Republican of Plattsburgh link:
http://pressrepublican.com/0100_news/x1442571330/Saranac-Lake-man-drowns-in-Marcy-Brook

Copy Cat Journalists

Media, Online News, , , , , , , ,

By Casey Bukro

Here’s an interesting idea:

Journalists should stop mimicking what’s happening on the internet.

Poynter said the idea sprang from the ninth annual Kent State Ethics Workshop in September, which focused on the world of entertainment and how journalists cover it.

You get a pretty good idea that it can be an ethics imbroglio just by some of the topics: Privacy vs. adoration, stalking and paparazzi.

A workshop organizer, Jan Leach of Kent State’s School of Journalism, said they picked entertainment ethics “because there’s so much entertainment and celebrity journalism available in all media…..”

The news, she adds, “is often part truth and part rumor, ” but consumers might not be able to tell the difference. “There’s so much spin from publicity departments.”

And, it might be fair to say, journalists fall for it or go along with it.

It’s easy to cover and does not take much imagination. But how much wall-to-wall coverage does the public need about Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus?

Even while reporting the latest escapades of such human train-wrecks, TV announcers can be heard to say: “Why are we doing this again?” They admit to giving more publicity to people acting odd, because they want the publicity.

The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages journalists to act independently and “avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.”

Though it’s called entertainment, there doesn’t seem to be much entertaining about it. It’s more like voyeurism.

Here’s an idea for what could be an entertaining story: The funny behavior of men and women in business, commerce and industry.

When’s the last time you saw a funny story about business? It’s all so serious, and people who cover it take it so seriously. There must be some humor in it somewhere, even though economics is called the dismal science.

Corporate publicity departments work overtime to make their CEOs look almost god-like.

Another example of copy cat journalism.

When to Quit, When to Fight

Uncategorized, ,

By David Craig

How do you respond when your boss asks you to do something you think is unethical?

A web editor for several business-to-business publications told me she was facing that question after a brief item she wrote drew a complaint from sales staff because an advertiser was not mentioned. She said her editor was pressuring her to add information about the advertiser even though it didn’t fit with the original story.

She was looking for confirmation that this was an ethical problem and trying to decide how to respond.

We talked about the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, and I agreed that there was an ethical problem based on the principle of acting independently. That was the easy part.

The hard part: what to do about it. She was considering quitting her job – a decision no one should take lightly.

I asked her whether this kind of request was part of a pattern or an isolated incident. That’s an important question when the personal stakes are this high. And if nothing like this had happened before, that suggests it might be better to stay and try to do things right than lose the opportunity. I also asked her whether she thought the incident itself was serious enough to justify quitting immediately.

She said nothing like this had happened before. But she was troubled by the support for the advertiser’s view.

She read me an email she had drafted saying she thought the decision was unethical. I suggested she explain why based on the SPJ code so it was clear this was not just her individual judgment but reflected the standards of the profession. As a result, she decided to raise the point about acting independently and (her idea) to include a link to the SPJ code.

I found out later that the editor did not agree and ran the story anyway with the added information from the advertiser. As of the time of this post, the caller was still working there but was trying to line up enough freelance work to leave.

Weapon in a Newspaper War: Politicians

Media, , , ,

By David Craig

At a time when many cities are watching one newspaper fight to stay afloat, New Orleans sits in the middle of a newspaper war.

The Times-Picayune, which angered many residents last year by going to three days a week in print, is now battling The Advocate, which is based in Baton Rouge but producing a New Orleans edition – now with its own New Orleans name. And The Times-Picayune is fighting back with new print products.

In the thick of this competition, The New Orleans Advocate made an unusual decision to use local politicians in television ads for the paper. Kevin Allman, a reporter for the New Orleans weekly Gambit, called me to ask my opinion for a story he was doing about the decision.

This was a new one to me. As his story points out, the campaign also uses other well-known locals such as musicians and sports figures. But among the people appearing are two parish presidents, a sheriff and the vice president of the New Orleans City Council.

As I often do, I pointed out a relevant principle in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics – in this case, acting independently. Allman did a good job in the story highlighting two specific elements: “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived” and “Remain free of associations that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.”

I was more concerned here about perception than reality. I don’t have any reason to think journalists at The New Orleans Advocate will be swayed to distort their coverage and favor one side in issues  involving these officials. But what will the public think?

I think damaged credibility is a real danger if politicians promote news organizations, especially at a time when many in the public have a low view of journalists’ credibility and see media outlets as biased. Kelly McBride from the Poynter Institute put it well in Allman’s story: “The Advocate obviously has a competitive relationship with The Times-Picayune,” McBride said. “If the politicians join The Advocate in sharing that message, what does that say about The Advocate’s ability to critically examine those politicians?”

I’m all for creative thinking about new ways to promote newspapers in an intensely competitive journalism environment. But using politicians in the promotion raises too many questions for me.

New Words for Old Ideas

Checkbook Journalism, Media, Sponsored Content, , , , , ,

By Casey Bukro

Every so often, some new terminology creeps into journalism lingo. Sometimes it’s a new concept, and sometimes it’s an old concept cloaked in different words.

That could apply to the term “sponsored views.”

In an interview with iMediaEthics, Patrick Pexton, former Washington Post ombudsman, said “sponsored views” are new words for “advertorials, messages provided by advertisers in a way that looks like journalism, or slightly cloaked journalism.”

But, he added emphatically, “it ain’t journalism.” Instead, it’s brand journalism.

This became an issue, as iMediaEthics reported, when the Washington Post launched a Sponsored Media program on June 12, allowing special interest groups to buy advertisements that are presented as comments below op-ed pieces on the Washington Post website.

The move came three months after the Post abandoned its ombudsman position and replaced it with a reader represenatative. Pexton was the newspaper’s last ombudsman, serving from 2011 to 2012.

The move was motivated by finance, said Pexton. ” The Post needs more revenue,” he said.

Since then, Jeffrey Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, bought the Post for $250 million.

One writer wonders if brand journalism and ethics can co-exist?