One (undeserved) step ahead of the public

Too often, journalists need to be reminded to say no to freebies and perks dangled in front of us. This example in a CNBC story (http://www.cnbc.com/id/31329943) might be a pebble in a canyon, but I think it illustrates the point. The story says Facebook offered certain groups - including a few hundred journalists - a chance to reserve vanity URLs before the public could get them. Vanity what? Facebook users now can insert names in their URLs instead of getting assigned numbers, which is supposed to make it easier to be found. This seems highly insignificant to me, yet someone must think it's important. OK, but why accept special early registration as a perk and cast even a modicum of doubt on your independence and integrity? Maybe it's a matter of thinking quickly and not carefully, or not thinking at all.

Ethics Committee: News council should abandon 'virtual hearing'

The SPJ Ethics Committee released the following statement on May 8:


For Immediate Release:
5/8/09

 Public polling shouldn’t be used to render ethics judgments about journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee said in response to a news council’s handling of a recent complaint in Washington state.

 The Washington News Council conducted a “virtual hearing” on a state official’s complaint about a TV station’s reporting on voting irregularities. Washington’s secretary of state said voting-related stories by KIRO, a CBS affiliate in Seattle, were flawed and inaccurate. KIRO has chosen not to give its side to the council.

 John Hamer, the news council’s executive director, said KIRO wouldn’t participate in a hearing or publicly address the complaint about its stories. Frustrated, the secretary of state withdrew his complaint.

 Todd Mokhtari, KIRO’s news director, said in an interview that the station stands by its voting-related stories. He declined to talk about the news council’s hearing process.

 The council hears complaints about news coverage and, ideally, mediates them or educates the public about the journalistic process.

 SPJ’s Ethics Committee sees merit in a news council as a mediator or an educator. A hearing can be worthwhile if all parties voluntarily participate and work toward a common understanding.

 The committee strongly objects to having a public online vote, or virtual hearing, on journalism ethics.

 On Monday, the council posted online voting results and comments, which were lopsided against KIRO. However, Hamer says the council doesn’t have the time or staff to verify the identities of the voters. See the poll results here.

 “The news council is wrong to emulate the ‘American Idol’ model of voting for a ‘winner,’” said Andy Schotz, chairman of SPJ’s Ethics Committee. “Gimmickry is a major step backward if the council wants to appear professional and credible.”

 Since 1998, when the Washington News Council started, it has conducted four hearings, Hamer said. Each time, the news organization that was challenged wouldn't participate.

 Hamer said the virtual hearing is an experiment in public engagement and keeping the media accountable.

 The experiment should be abandoned, the Ethics Committee Believes. Discussions of journalism ethics are often complex and nuanced. Frequently, there's no single “right” decision.

 News councils can bring news organizations and the public together to understand each others’ positions. But this online poll is unscientific, unreliable, misleading and based on incomplete information.

 The Ethics Committee encourages KIRO and all news organizations to be accountable. They should listen to and answer challenges to their coverage. If they make mistakes, they should correct them.

 News organizations should embrace efforts to fairly resolve questions of fairness and accuracy. The news council's virtual hearing undercuts that process.

 Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, SPJ promotes the free flow of information vital to a well-informed citizenry; works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists; and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press. For more information about SPJ, please visit www.spj.org.

SPJ Ethics Committee criticizes L.A. Times' fake news story

(This post, from April 21, was reposted on May 12 after it was inadvertently removed)

Several days ago, I posted a few lines of quick reaction to the L.A. Times' fake news story on the front page. Together, the SPJ Ethics Committee has come up with a more detailed reaction.


SPJ criticizes fake news story on L.A. Times' front page


 The Society of Professional Journalists' Ethics Committee has concluded that a Los Angeles Times front-page ad blurred the lines between news and advertising. The front-page ad was designed to look like a news story.

 The committee cited the SPJ Code of Ethics, which urges journalists to “distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.”

 The April 9 ad, promoting the premiere of NBC’s drama “Southland, “ was positioned in the lower left corner of the Los Angeles Times' front page. While the NBC ad was in a different typeface and the NBC peacock logo and the label “advertisement” ran above the headline – distinguishing marks to be sure – the ad was laid out like a news story. TVweek.com called it a “faux story.”

 "Integrity must anchor our journalism," said Andy Schotz, the Ethics Committee's chairman. "We serve our readers, listeners and viewers. There's no reason to trick or confuse them with fake news, not even for money."

 A number of newspapers have embraced front-page ads in the past few years, a practice resurrected from the 19th century. The practice itself is not unethical. As long as advertising dollars do not influence editorial content or front-page news judgment, an ad on the front page of the newspaper is no more troublesome than an ad on page 6 or the back page.  

 However, the L.A. Times’ ad was a definite attempt to grab NBC’s money and readers’ attention – without making it crystal clear the story was not news.

 The L.A. Times acknowledged as much in this statement:

 "The delivery of news and information is a rapidly changing business, and the Los Angeles Times is continuously testing innovative approaches. That includes creating unique marketing opportunities for our advertising partners, and today's NBC 'Southland' ad was designed to stretch traditional boundaries."

 The L.A. Times followed that up with a four-page movie advertisement in a Sunday section that The New York Times said was laid out like a news section. NBC and Paramount Pictures both said The L.A. Times brought the ad ideas to them.

 The journalists responsible for the news content of the L.A. Times protested the NBC ad, according to Reuters, which reported 100 employees signed a petition protesting the ad the day before it ran.

 “The NBC ad may have provided some quick cash, but it has caused incalculable damage to this institution,” the petition said. “This action violates a 128-year pact with our readers that the front page is reserved for the most meaningful stories of the day. Placing a fake news article on A-1 makes a mockery of our integrity and journalistic standards."

 Geneva Overholser, director of the school of journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and a respected media critic, told The New York Times she agreed with the ad’s critics. “You dress an ad up to look like editorial content precisely because you think it will make it more valuable,” Overholser said. “Fundamentally, that’s an act of deception.”

 These are perilous times for the journalism industry as publishers everywhere search for a business model that will help keep the public informed and keep the governments accountable for their decisions, the Ethics Committee said.

 As part of the effort to survive and create new revenue, newspapers are experimenting and rightly so. But those experiments must not cross the ethical divide and blur the lines between news content and advertisements, as the L.A. Times has done.

 SPJ calls on newspaper publishers to remember their ethical responsibilities to readers while experimenting with ways to increase advertising revenue. The L.A. Times’ approach is wrong and it undermines the integrity of the work produced by the journalists who work there.

 “It will be a hollow victory if the Los Angeles Times manages to survive economically only by selling out the integrity of the newspaper,” Schotz said.

There goes the front-page neighborhood

It's hard to argue - in concept - with the L.A. Times journos trying to keep their front page pure (http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090409/los-angeles-times-staff-fake-news-story-embarrassing-and-demoralizing/). Maybe front-page ads don't ruin our credibility, and are simply the end of a traditional divide (although I'm not a fan). But ads masquerading as news stories are intentionally misleading and we shouldn't play along, teasing our readers. This particular ad, though, doesn't look much like a real news story compared to others I've seen.

A not-so-quick fix - or none at all

Accountability is an important part of ethical journalism. SPJ's Code of Ethics has a section on the topic, and encourages journalists to "Admit mistakes and correct them promptly."

Reasonable people can debate "promptly."

Hours? A day? Two? A week?

I've read about The New York Times dragging its feet and running a correction months later.

But that's drag-racing speed compared to what Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander revealed in Sunday's column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009032002272.html)

Alexander wrote that a few requests for corrections have gone unanswered since 2004. The paper's backlog of correction requests, he wrote, is in the hundreds, stuck as if in a black hole.

Alexander does a great service by showing that one of The Post's procedure for accountability is failing.

Giggling about deception

I rarely hurry to this blog to make an immediate comment, but I felt the need while watching CBS News anchor Katie Couric interviewed by David Letterman a few minutes ago. Couric talked about how exciting it was to be part of an off-the-record White House lunch with President Obama and several other news anchors and Sunday talk show hosts. The president told the group some things off the record and other things on background. Later, on a broadcast, you can't quote his exact words, Couric explained, but you can paraphrase him, using attribution such as "someone very close to the president - wink wink." Here, she laughed, as if the deception were funny. It's far too easy to ruin our credibility - the reason people trust us - by playing loose with the facts. Remember Judith Miller going along with Scooter Libby's charade and agreeing to call him a "former Hill staffer"? While accurate in one sense, it was intentionally misleading to throw readers off the trail of the truth. Lest we forget, our duty is to our readers, listeners and viewers. We should be judicious in granting anonymity and we should do our best to explain why it was necessary. Put aside the question whether network anchors should be letting the president go off the record in this way. Does Couric think "someone very close to the president" is truthful to her audience? Let's hope she was telling a joke that was bad in a way she didn't understand. But I also remember another Couric episode that put her in a bad light. An item pilfered from The Wall Street Journal was posted on Couric's CBS News blog. She read the piece as if she were sharing her own thoughts. Furthermore, a CBS producer had posted the item on her behalf, as if Couric had written it. Enough, please. We expect integrity and honesty from a network news anchor.

Cartoonish judgment

Whether Rupert Murdoch's apology (http://www.nypost.com/seven/02242009/news/regionalnews/statement_from_rupert_murdoch_156676.htm) for the New York Post's dead chimpanzee cartoon will stem the raging backlash is hard to say.

The Post deserves the criticism it got for its terrible judgment. The paper's halfhearted half-apology (http://www.nypost.com/seven/02192009/postopinion/editorials/that_cartoon_155984.htm) when the protest heated up only made things worse. Murdoch seems more heartfelt this time.

That said, it's too much of an assumption to conclude that the Post's intent was to spoof the assassination of the president after making a coarse racial insult about him.

The paper, in its defensive statement, and the cartoonist, in a CNN interview, both say the cartoon was not meant as critics have portrayed it.

The cartoon (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/chimp-stimulus-cartoon-raises-racism-concerns/) shows two police officers, one of whom has just shot and killed a chimp.

The chimp is lying dead in a pool of blood on a city sidewalk, two bullet holes in its chest. It has a crazed look on its face.

The caption: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."

The red flags of offensiveness here are overwhelming.

It's hard to see how anyone could miss the odious link between the stimulus bill - which is immediately connected to President Obama, whether he wrote it or not - and a murdered monkey. It smacks you right in the face.

I, for one, believe the artist and the editors might have meant the cartoon to be a comment on the stimulus bill: It was so bad, a crazed monkey must have written it.

This fits the Post's longtime political stance, as well as its tendency to use sharp, sometimes bawdy humor. I've seen other tasteless cartoons in the Post; that's its style.

(Never mind that the shooting of the chimp after it attacked and injured a woman was nothing to joke about either, even for a paper as low-class as the Post.)

I am baffled, though, why no one at the paper tried to clearly explain the joke after it had backfired so miserably. Simply defending the cartoon as satire leaves it to offended readers to decide what it meant. Many concluded that the satire was the shooting of the president, who is black, after comparing him to a psychotic monkey.

Let's assume these terrible, blatant signs escaped everyone in the newsroom. Maybe they all had a brain cramp at the same time.

When the complaints came flooding in, the Post should have recognized the perception problem it had created and worked to fix it.

When so many people were offended, it was time to figure out what went wrong, not tell people to buzz off.

There are basic lessons in taste, sensitivity, history, racism, and responsiveness in this episode. Let's hope the Post learned them.

Old friends

John F. Harris of Politico wrote a good color piece about a prominent political gang of four that chats on the phone daily, and then some (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18011.html). The story didn't address it, but the ongoing relationship between George Stephanopoulos, the Democratic-insider-turned-talk-show-host, raised a red flag for Brent Bozell III of the Media Research Center (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88196). ABC News said there's nothing to worry about; Stephanopoulos talks to various people every day. But ABC isn't answering the right question. It's not, 'Who does he call?' It's, 'Who are his friends and what is the extent of the friendships?' Ok, maybe that's two questions. On the other hand, who among us expected the politically connected Stephanopoulos to have flicked an objectivity switch and distanced himself from his old cronies? And, is he a journalist or a TV personality?

Doing the write thing

You might remember the question about whether Gwen Ifill, while working on a book that included a chapter about Barack Obama, should have moderated a vice presidential debate.

During an online chat on Thursday, Ifill faced another question about her book and her promotion of it as Obama took office (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/01/15/DI2009011502135.html)

The book is an examination of "a generation of rising political leaders" and reading it probably "will put your concerns to rest," she told the questioner.

Charity, revoked

This item from the Christmas season is telling. You've probably seen the heart-tugging newspaper series that double as charity appeals. This one blew up in the face of the Cincinnati Enquirer ((http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/contents/comments/does_the_old_and_impoverished_child_sex_offender_deserve_a_gift_this_christ/). One subject, the paper found out after publication, is a convicted sex offender. I'd like to think that a campaign to help the needy is more complicated than the abrupt morality play of this correction.

*Swoon* It's POTUS!

Even if we're carefully detached on the beat, what happens when the nation's most celebrated politico comes to our newsroom? (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/inauguration-watch/2009/01/obama_visits_washington_post.html) Should we crowd around, crane our necks, snap pictures? Is that human or unprofessional? How about this: We're journos, we're curious, we investigate. But there's no real "off duty" when it comes to staying an arm's length removed. As a guide, consider what you'd do while covering a public meeting.

Is this healthy?

Give CNN credit for acknowledging the new possible conflict involving its on-air health expert (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/06/gupta.surgeon.general/?iref=mpstoryview). But I have trouble with the reasoning. "Health and wellness matters" are fair game but not "health-care policy"? There's no getting around the fact that the soon-to-be top educator in the Obama administration is part of the news team at "the most trusted name in news." It would be wiser to avert the conflict entirely - take him off the air now, instead of later - rather than brush up against the ethical line for a while.

Gullible travels

On the subject of checking everything before you print it...

This is a good piece looking back at Alan Abel, who perpetrated many pranks that suckered the press (http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/549395)

Consider how trusting we journalists can be, especially when writing feature stories and profiles. How far do we go to verify information before we include it in a story? Is "well, he said it" enough?

Jolly old myth

In a recent column in Quill, I wrote that we shouldn't omit the name of someone portraying Santa Claus, if it's part of the story. I received a pointed response from an angry reader who told me I must have had unresolved issues about Santa Claus as a child. (A decent accusation if you don't know me, but not true.)

Today, I saw this Chicago Tribune column (http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2008/12/my-santa-claus.html) on two parents with different views on what truth children should be told about Santa.

My point wasn't what parents should tell children - that's up to them - but that newspapers shouldn't intentionally play along with legends and myths.

Checking it ... not even once

Unfortunately, both newspapers for which I have worked in my career have printed fake letters to the editor, so I can empathize with The New York Times, which just did it (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/opinion/22letters.corr.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1230094800&en=03cc697c3c1376e9&ei=5087%0A). A key journalistic principle applies: verify, verify, verify.