Local news death spiral: Kyle Pope reports that job cuts at the New York Daily News signals need to avoid self-pity in journalism.
“This can’t be about us,” he writes. “It has to be about why the country should care if local news goes away, which is the trajectory we now find ourselves on. What are the effects on a democracy if local news is no longer in the picture?”
He adds: “If you’re in journalism and you can’t muster an answer to that question, you need to move on.”
By Casey Bukro
Lynching is no joking matter in the United States. News manager Robert Selkow found himself in the middle of a controversy over a Halloween display featuring three figures hanging from a tree.
“I got a photo on a smartphone,” recalled Selkow, who is site manager and news director of clarksvillenow.com, an online hyperlocal website affiliated with six radio stations serving Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. “It looked like a scene out of (the movie) ‘Mississippi Burning,’ black figures being hanged.”
He said it turned out to be “the most powerful image we ever published.”
Selkow contacted Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists in facing this sensitive issue, and agreed to discuss details of the case publicly.
The offensive Halloween display was in the residential area of the Fort Campbell military base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border near Clarksville.
Continue reading Photo of Halloween Display Challenges Editor’s Ethics
By Casey Bukro
James Foley was an American photojournalist who captured the gruesome images of savage warfare, until he became one of those images himself.
Foley, 40, dressed in prisoner orange with a shaved head, is seen kneeling next to a masked, black-clad man holding a knife. Kidnapped in Syria almost two years ago, Foley seems to grimace as the masked man clutches his shirt from behind.
A video posted on YouTube, then taken down, reportedly shows Foley decapitated, his bloody head detached from his body and resting on his back. Two U.S. officials said they believe the video is authentic.
Journalistically, one of the issues in reporting on Foley is whether the grim photo, which seems to show the journalist in the last moments of his life, should have been published.
The New York Post and the New York Daily News gave the photo front-page exposure, causing Washington Post reporter Abby Phillip to ask if the tabloids had gone “too far by printing gruesome images of James Foley’s execution.”
The Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics encourages sensitivity in the use of photographs involving those caught up by tragedy or grief, and “avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.”
For tabloids, that can be a challenge. The rule seems to be the more shocking, the better, and big images are best
This is not the first time the New York Post is seen as going “too far.” On Dec. 4, 2012, it published a cover photo of a man desperately trying to climb up on the platform of the New York City subway after a panhandler allegedly pushed him onto the tracks.
The man in the photo is moments from death as he looks at the train bearing down on him.
The photo appeared with the words, “this man is about to die,” and “doomed.” It caused outrage among those who thought it was heartless to publish such a photo. Some thought the photographer should have helped the doomed man, instead of taking his picture.
Shock value has always been a tool of the trade for tabloid journalism, and, to some extent its younger media relative, online journalism.
What does it mean these days to “go too far”? Is that idea passé?
There was a time when the personal lives of American presidents were off limits. Clearly, rules change.
What do you think? Is shock value just a hangover from tabloid journalism and outmoded, or justified at a time when movies and television trade in sex and sensationalism? Are we just old-fashioned when we cringe from photos of men about to die?
Journalists from three organizations, including SPJ, are pondering writing or rewriting codes of ethics. What should they say about shock value in the news?
By Casey Bukro
Anonymous sources — used by media and by government officials — came up again in a New York Daily News piece by James Warren.
Warren used a press briefing by Josh Earnest, the new White House press secretary, to illustrate how Earnest and a reporter dueled, trading accusations of withholding sources. Back and forth they went, parry and thrust.
Warren also comments on the value of White House news briefings, and whether they actually produce news.
“It has been a fairly informative ritual at times evolved (perhaps partly as a result of the cameras) into an hour or so of premeditated evasions by the spokesman; a bit too much prosecutorial posturing by some of the reporters; and, ultimately, rhetorical stand-offs in which there’s little advancement in public understanding of important matters.
Actually, Warren noted, if a White House reporter’s annual salary depended on legitimate stories produced by the briefings, he’d “be eligible for unemployment compensation.”
But the bulk of Warren’s story deals with the give-and-take between Earnest and a reporter, who was asking for more on-the-record sources from the White House. That would depend, said Earnest, on a case-by-case evaluation and ground rules “that will serve your interests and the White House interest the best.”
Warren called the “spitball fight” hypocritical.
“The Washington media, like media at other levels of journalism, is often involved in a mutual self-protection racket with the people we cover,” he wrote. “It can be at the White House, City Hall in Chicago or a county board in Texas. The dynamic is roughly similar. Too many reporters are manipulated with scarcely a qualm.”
About.Com Media describes the dangers of using anonymous news sources and offers five questions to ask yourself before trusting anonymous sources.
The site points out that inexperienced reporters might believe that using anonymous sources “make news stories sound more important,” but the practice presents “many ethical and legal dangers.”
Taking a Devil’s Advocate approach, New York News & Politics explored whether the Watergate investigation leading to President Nixon’s resignation could have been possible without W. Mark Felt, later identified as the “Deep Throat” confidential informant.
The story touches on the working habits of Seymour Hersh and Jayson Blair, with comments from Bob Woodward.
“Journalism exists to get us closer to all sorts of truth, and anonymous sources are essential to the endeavor,” concludes the author, Kurt Andersen. “Even now, they provide more social benefit than they (exact) in moral costs.”
Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists 