"But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice."
-- Charles Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray
Showing posts with label Journalism ethics and standards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism ethics and standards. Show all posts
As actors under American criminal law, conjoined twins present paradoxical obstacles to the application of traditional methods of criminal punishments. The Western notion of individuality precludes such duplicitous beings from orthodox measures to remedy criminal action, particularly the crime of murder. Constitutional limitations of due process and guarantees of life, liberty and property militate against equal treatment of these actors under the law. I believe that within our Constitutional framework, the only thing to be done in this situation is to release the conjoined twins.
And what if the innocent twin was a reporter and the killer twin was his source? I'll figure out a way to shoehorn this into journalism ethics the next time I teach it.
Pretty good discussion yesterday! Nothing earthshaking, but the kids did note many of the “dated” elements – Billie’s flirting; the “patriarchal” newsroom – and their possible “ethical” significance -- and we had quite a good time talking about how the presentation of the text – the casting; the direction – pushed us toward taking Billie’s side. We talked about how different out reaction might be if the Nazi had been played by Jonah Hill, whom I assume you enjoyed in Superbad…
Dig the opinions of my other experts. I said you were the only one of the four who was not pretty much constantly drunk during the workday.
Ehe Education Reporter
I think the issue here is less about the ethics of the case than in how reckless they were in ignoring the Jewish Nazi's threats to kill her and maybe take others down ("I have nothing to lose," he said in the newspaper office.) They should have gotten the police or FBI involved to watch this guy, if not the entire terrorist organization.
But I guess that's a 21st century perspective. (Also, Billy's coy 'li'l ol' me' behavior at the beginning would never wash today.)
Strictly on the run/don't run question, sure they had to run the story. Not only was it a great tale -- which your crazy Jewish Nazi always will be-- but it's kind of like ol' Lou said at the end: It's a valuable lesson in how hateful behavior comes about. (Or words to that effect.) That's important for people to understand before terrorism gets out of control. So my view is that it would have been more irresponsible to sit on it than to run it, despite the suicide.
But getting back to my earlier point, they got off easy. He could have taken them all down. Btw, there was a real-life example of this, sorta. Tanya Schevitz was covering the hell out of UC in about 2006 or 7 when the UC chancellor (a woman...can't remember her name) hurled herself off a building in SF. Poor Tanya actually heard the words "you killed her."
The Columnist
Watched the Lou Grant episode, pleasantly surprised to see the reporter and boss meet in a bar. Ah, good times. As to ethics, I didn’t see an ethical question. The reporter played it by the book mostly. She asked if it was all right to use her tape recorder to a friendly interviewer, didn’t mention it to the Nazi, used the old, “accurate quotes” explanation when he brought it up. A minor sin and how business is done. The episode showed the work involved in a story, while avoiding the boredom, fear and discomfort of talking to strangers. A minor sin. The Jewish-Nazi guy is a legitimate news story, what people do with it is up to them. Nobody knows the future.
So, I don’t see an ethical dilemma. It’s more of a made-up TV ethical dilemma.
The Prize Winner
Enjoyed the opportunity to view the old Lou Grant episode and maybe contribute a “true blue” journalist’s opinion of the ethical question(s) raised in the TV production. No question that the newspaper was justified, and duty bound, to run the Striker story. Young Striker’s fatal destiny began the day he rejected his Jewish birthright for the ideological hatred of Adolph Hitler, a vile, deluded murderer sworn to eradicate the Jewish race--- his people, his family, his heritage. From my perspective the paper’s profile on Striker and his gang of crazies did not drive him to self destruction. The man’s horrific guilt of inflicting pain on his family, and the Jewish community worldwide, took him over the edge. After all, here was a man who was a, “clear thinker”, intelligent, grounded, according to a former teacher. Exposure by the media, highlighted by Striker being a Jew, prompted the man, I believe, to grasp the realization of a series of unforgivable choices. Hitler did not have the right idea. Neither did Striker in aligning with the architect of the Holocaust. Good reporters should not get weepy if a misguided, guilt-driven young man ends his life because the beacon of truth found him in a dark lonely crowd idolizing violence against selective humanity.
The Executive Editor
I parse the dilemma in two steps:
1. Before you decide to publish, you weigh how public the person is and what his danger to society is. If the guy has been the public face of the American Nazi party and an out-there KKK member, then he has made himself public and his politics and background are relevant and fair game. If he is a closeted Nazi and KKK member, and otherwise a nice guy, his politics and background and personal beliefs are none of your business. But if the guy is a private person, and you have clear evidence that he is a serial killer, child molester or otherwise presents a clear and present danger, then you must take action (perhaps going to the cops rather than publishing a story, but that's another discussion).
2. Assuming you decide there is a story and it is worthy of publication, you ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen? If you can live with that worst, then publish. If you can't, then consider your alternatives. Among those might be: Should you be in the reporting/editing business? Another alternative is to make the information public is a less threatening way: Slip the item to your gossip columnist so he/she can print a "blind item" that won't identify you or, directly, the Nazi/KKK fellow. Or, these days, post anonymously on the Web...
My word. I calculate it's been months -- nay, years -- since I went six days without posting. Certainly many a week I've filled the air with many a "faux" post -- a link, a jape, a picture of a cat -- but like the shark I *have* kept moving, and thus the blog kept breathing. (It's alive. It's alive.) So I have let you down, Friends of the Blog.
I rather think my lack of posts means the world has been too much with me, so my silence is symptom. (Say that three times fast.) Let's reverse engineer this puppy: I'll post as if all were well, and the semblance may become the thing.
A bulleted week:
* Big doin's at the U. The administration has announced that our habitual Monday-Wednesday/Tuesday-Thursday teaching sked will now become TR/MWF. The idea is eliminating underuse of classrooms on Friday. I don't think the new scheduling works for a lot of reasons, and we don't like it for a lot of reasons -- though the two sets of reasons are not necessarily the same. More to come, dear reader.
* I went biking by the bay (try to say that... oh never mind) with Big Pat Daugherty on a brisk fine day, weather crisp enough to fool you into thinking the next day would be crisper still and the next crisper still, until: winter cold. But that's not what happens here. Just a whisper of winter but, like Godot, it never comes.
* I had a nice visit with Eric Mar's legislative analyst Cassandra Costello (a former student) and Daniel Homsey, who works for SF getting neighborhoods tanned, fit and ready to solve their own problems. He had some great ideas about getting USF journalism students out in the neighborhoods around us. A light bulb flashes in my head: hyperlocal news.
* And why don't you welcome me back as a potent poster by watching the episode of Lou Grant I've linked to below. I've asked the journalism ethics class to watch it as prep for Monday discussion of Ethical Dilemmas!!
That's the topic of the next essay my ethics students owe me. Much of the "literature" (pompous word for journalists wondering out loud) is against it, but I think the issue is not really a matter of "direct ethics" -- journalists at heart think it's unethical -- but ethics at a remove. That is, if enough readers/viewer think it's unethical and if engaging in it costs credibility, then the practical cost of it is greater than the value of whatever facts would not otherwise be obtained.
And let's step back one more remove: The malefactors exposed can sue for fraud if the undercover reporter has filled out (let us say) an employment application that disguises the reporter's true work background. As in many libel cases, juries too often side with the "victim," and even if the news organization wins on appeal, the financial costs discourage future risk-taking.
The topic of the first essay in my journalistic ethics class is the "ethics of interviewing," which I put in quotes not simply because it's a title but also because one sometimes uses quote marks to indicate that which is quoted is not to be considered in the common way, that it may be ironic or equivocal.
What is equivocal about interviewing is its hiddenness. What happens in interviewing stays in interviewing, even when interviews are videotaped since questions are often edited out. But for print reporters for whom jotted notes are the only record of what went on -- why borrow trouble by even suggesting you have questions about how you question?
I like to say that the reporter's task is to pump the interviewee dry -- the implication being that broad ethical latitude should be given as to methods --but that the real ethical heavy lifting comes when you decide what to do with what you've pumped out. I suppose my operative principle is that you, as interviewer, need to know everything but that your reader -- and indeed your editor, that cold-hearted bastard -- need not know what you know. Some things are meant to stay in your notebook.
You might say this is more of a feature writer's approach and that a news reporter would, of course, empty the notebook onto the page without compunction. I think not. I think every good reporter gets information about which he/she does not feel the benefit of publication outweighs potential damage to the source of the information, even if the only damage comes from identifying the source.
But returning to the techniques of interviewing, one profits (I think) from questioning how you question. Naturally, as a teacher of ethics, I would feel that way. That's the point of the course. Prethink. Rethink. And *then* having said *that*, I warn against analysis paralysis. If the only lesson the kids take is to be timid deferential interviewers, didn't we spend the Bush years relearning how ill democracy is served by timid deferential *ethically fastidious* interviewing?
La ronde, or do I mean thesis/antithesis/synthesis? Mulling is such a good word. In ethics class we spend a good deal of time mulling.
But more than okay depends on what flows from the speech. It seemed to invite a delay of the public option, and that is either smart politics that will someday produce a public option, meaning an inevitable expansion of Medicare to the masses.
Or not.
But it was passionate and eloquent. Maybe it will be many things to many people, inspiring some, goading others. Maybe it provides cover for those who waver. But if only the spirit of LBJ would ooze up from beneath the White House floorboards and inhabit BHO for a couple hours a week.
By the way in Journalism Ethics today I wanted to use the mainstream reporting of the disruptions at the congressional townhalls during August -- the question being were the disruptions cherry-picked and exaggerated.
And Dah Babies didn't seem to know what in the hall I was talking about. Or maybe they did and they were shy. Sometimes, I flare my nostrils and stamp my feet too much. I must be terrifying.
'At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously- I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties. Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'
To me, that describes journalism its practice and its instruction, once you venture beyond the 'toolbox,' all those interviewing and newswriting techniques that any reasonably clever person with an inquisitive disposition can master in six weeks of close attention to how the job is done.
But to what end? Some rules would be a relief. What's the joke about the Ten Commandments, that they are not the Ten Suggestions? But when it comes to journalism ethics, I have only suggestions. No, you choose. It's up to you. Your facts are assembled in dread array. You can write it-- you certainly know how to write it -- but should you?
What delicious self importance. What exhilarating self absorption! How I loved it.
Meanwhile in Florida E. tries to decide how to settle the question of how her mother is to be allowed to die. And today Mom is doing better! The physical therapist says she's walking better. Why she could easily be mistaken for a child of 88, not 98, the physical therapist says! How much pain should we impose on her or encourage her to endure in the hope that she can push through the pain to.... What?
Uncertainty. Uncertainty. Uncertainty and the responsibility that comes with it. Sometimes it's fun. And sometimes it's not.
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