|
|
|
Focus on Ethics!
It’s our duty as journalists, and a key mission for SPJ, to promote and encourage ethical journalistic practices. To that end, SPJ has provided ideas for chapters, newsrooms and instructors to promote ethics in their communities. Join our professional and students chapters in their efforts to hold educational programs by tailoring one of their Ethics in Journalism Week programs to your community’s needs. We’ve gathered tips and facts for writing stories or editorials about journalism ethics. We’ve provided case studies to help educators and editors get their students and staff thinking and engaged in discussion. These ideas can be applied during Ethics in Journalism Week, April 21-27, or any time of the year.
Suggestions for Ethics Week Programs
SPJ chapters looking for ways to celebrate Ethics in Journalism Week through local chapter programs should consult the list below:
— Work to emphasize or make it a theme in improving ethics in local journalism by focusing on the importance of the media to act independently.
— Have a discussion about a recent ethical controversy over a local story. Invite the person who reported it, his or her supervisor, and critics.
— Try whenever possible to include participation of the general public.
— If your community has media critics, invite them to talk about truth in the local press and broadcast outlets.
— Have a chapter meeting to discuss worthy recipients of ethics awards (the people who will get framed Code of Ethics plaques that will be sent to you from headquarters). You’ll probably want to do this in addition to other programming. When you decide on a winner, issue a press release.
— Explore the opportunities in talk radio. Tell them it’s Ethics in Journalism Week; ask if they’d be interested in having a spokesperson from the chapter go on-air to discuss the importance of acting independently while reporting.
— Public television or community-access cable channels might be interested in hosting similar discussions.
— Submit op-ed pieces to local newspapers. (If there are competing papers, don’t send the same piece to both.) Or write letters. (Shorter op-ed pieces, say 500 words or so, have the best chance of getting in. So do short letters of less than 200 words.)
Talking Points for Letters and Interviews:
— Responsible journalists do care about being ethical and value acting independently.
— Promoting ethical journalism has been identified by members of the Society of Professional Journalists as one of SPJ’s two principal missions. The other is freedom of information.
— The SPJ Code of Ethics is an industry standard. It was one of the first in this country. The first version was adopted in 1926.
— The code is a living document, and has been updated several times, most recently in 1995. It took two years, but the final version was adopted by delegates to the national convention unanimously, and with a two-minute standing ovation.
— The Code incorporates two principles that have been part of the SPJ Code from the beginning: Seek Truth and Report It and Act Independently.
— Good journalists recognize that ethical behavior is crucial to journalism’s credibility.
— Credibility is vital to a responsible news medium’s survival in a competitive environment.
— Ethics has long been one of the things distinguishing SPJ from journalism organizations that don’t give as much attention to the “big-picture” issues that SPJ focuses on.
[Top]
Promoting Ethics in Journalism Week
All chapters can promote Ethics in Journalism Week and to support those efforts, each chapter will receive the following:
— Pocket-size Code of Ethics - should be distributed to members
of your chapter and to fellow journalists in your community.
— Code of Ethics Posters - should be hung in newsrooms, break
areas, classrooms, student publication offices, or wherever you see fit.
— Code of Ethics Plaques - (sent to pro chapters)
could be awarded to a local media outlet for exemplary ethical behavior set
forth by the Society.
[Top]
Points for Letters and Interviews
As part of Ethics in Journalism Week, chapter leaders should seek out ways to interact with the public and share information about responsible reporting. Points to remember when communicating with the media and the public:
— Responsible journalists
do care about being ethical.
— Promoting ethical
journalism has been identified by members of the Society of Professional Journalists
as one of SPJ's two principal missions. The other is freedom of information.
— The
SPJ Code of Ethics is an industry standard. It was one of the first in this
country. The first version was adopted in 1926.
— The code is a
living document, and has been updated several times since, most recently in
1995. It took two years, but the final version was adopted by delegates to
the national convention unanimously, and with a two-minute standing ovation.
— The Code incorporates
two principles that have been part of the SPJ Code from the beginning: Seek
Truth and Report It, and Act Independently.
— The 1995 Code
also adds two sections reminding journalists that they are, after all, still
part of a community and humanity: Minimize Harm and Be Accountable.
— Take along a
copy of the code. Here are the four sections for quick reference.
Seek Truth and Report It: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous
in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Minimize Harm: Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues
as human beings deserving of respect.
Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest
other than the public's right to know.
Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers
and each other.
— Good
journalists recognize that ethical behavior is crucial to journalism's credibility.
— Credibility
is vital to a responsible news medium's survival in a competitive environment.
— Ethics
has long been
one of the things distinguishing SPJ from journalism organizations that don’t
give as much attention to the “big-picture” issues that SPJ focuses
on.
[Top]
Chapter Ethics Grant Application Process
To encourage promotion of Ethics in Journalism Week, $1000 grants are available to chapters for ethics programming. The grant is made possible through a generous donation from the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. There is one grant available for each of the 12 regions. To be eligible for an Ethics Grant, chapters must be in good standing with the national organization and have a 2006-2007 annual report on file with the national office.
For the next two years, Ethics in Journalism Week will continue to focus on a specific section of the SPJ Code of Ethics. For 2008, your program proposal must focus on “Act Independently.” Your proposed program must take place between April 21-27, 2008. Funds will not be granted for programs that fall outside of Ethics in Journalism Week.
The proposal should include the following:
— Chapter Name and Region Number
— Complete contact information for the person submitting the proposal including mailing address, telephone number and e-mail address.
— Date of proposed program to be held during Ethics in Journalism Week 2008. (Your program must be held during Ethics in Journalism Week, April 21-27. Funds will not be awarded to programs held outside of Ethics in Journalism Week.)
— A description of a program that will be sponsored by the chapter. The program, centered on the “Act Independently” portion of the SPJ Code of Ethics should promote ethical, responsible journalism and benefit the chapter and its membership. The program should not be conducted as part of the regional conference.
— A preliminary budget for the event. (If your proposal is selected, you will be required to file a recap of your event with the national office and include a complete budget, including receipts, detailing how funds awarded by SPJ were spent).
— Grant funds may cover travel expenses for speakers, but funds will not be awarded to cover speaker fees or honorariums.
— Priority is given to requests that do not seek reimbursement for food or meal expenses.
Timeline for proposals:
— Submit proposal by midnight, EST, Monday, November 12, 2007.
— Only electronic submissions will be considered. Proposals must be submitted using the grant application form on the SPJ Web site. Click here to access the form.
— Grant recipients will be notified by December 14, 2007.
Please note: Date changes to your program may result in forfeiture of awarded grant funds.
Click here to submit your proposal online. If you have a question or would like further details, contact
Heather Porter at hporter@spj.org or at
317/927-8000 ext.204.
[Top]
|
|
Ethics Week
General Information
2008 Programs
Apply Online
Ethics
Ethics Home
News/Articles
Code of Ethics
Case Studies
Ethics Answers
Ethics Hotline
Resources
Ethics week
Ethics Committee
Message Board
Code Words:
SPJ's Ethics Committee Blog
• SPJ President: Ethical Journalism Isn't Lost
• Obama Objectivity
• 'Citizen McCaw,' Pentagon News Analysts, More ...
Ethics Committee
This committee's purpose is to encourage the use of the Society's
Code of Ethics, which promotes the highest professional standards for journalists
of all disciplines. Public concerns are often answered by this committee. It
also acts as a spotter for reporting trends in the nation, accumulating case
studies of jobs well done under trying circumstances.
Ethics Committee
Andy Schotz, chair
Hagerstown, Md.
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Andy Schotz is a reporter for The Herald-Mail, a daily newspaper in Hagerstown, Md. He has covered a variety of beats, including city hall and police and courts. He occasionally fills in as city editor. His newest assignment is covering the Maryland statehouse, starting with the 2007 session. When he joined the paper in 2000, he was the one person in the one-person Berkeley County, W.Va., bureau.
Schotz is on the board of SPJ’s Washington, D.C., Pro chapter and has helped the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association with some projects. A Long Island native, he has a bachelor’s degree from the University at Albany in upstate New York. He previously worked for eight years at The Altamont Enterprise, a weekly paper outside Albany, as a reporter and, for part of that time, an editor.
Please contact Andy only at his home e-mail address, which is where he responds to SPJ inquiries.
Fred Brown, vice chair
2862 S. Oakland Ct.
Aurora, Colo., 80014
303/829-4647
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Fred Brown is a former national president of SPJ (1997-98) and is very active on its ethics committee. He writes a column on ethics for Quill magazine and served on the committee that wrote the Society’s 1996 code of ethics.
Brown officially retired from The Denver Post in early 2002, but continues to write a Sunday editorial page column for the newspaper. He also does analysis for Denver’s NBC television station, teaches communication ethics at the University of Denver, and is a principal in Hartman & Brown, LLP, a media training and consulting firm. He has won several awards for writing and community service, including a Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial writing in 1988. He is an Honor Alumnus of Colorado State University, a member of the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame, and serves on the boards of directors of Colorado Public Radio, the Colorado Freedom of Information Council and the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation.
SPJ Ethics
Committee Members
Robert Buckman
337/482-5221
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Robert Buckman, Ph.D., is an associate professor of communication at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. He is head of the print journalism sequence and is faculty adviser for the SPJ chapter. His specialties include ethics, media-military relations and Latin American media, especially press freedom issues, and he has been a regular contributor to Quill on these topics. He is also a freelance journalist, writing for various newspapers and magazines on Latin American politics and on Louisiana politics and culture. He has been on the SPJ Ethics Committee since 1996, when he participated in revising the Code of Ethics.
Buckman earned a B.A. in journalism and political science from Texas Christian University in 1970, his M.A. in political science from TCU in 1972 and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986. He was a reporter for the Fort Worth Press from 1972 to ’74, an editor with the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service from 1974 to ’80 and the Texas capitol correspondent for the Fort Worth News-Tribune from 1980 to ’86. He was on the faculty of Loyola University in New Orleans from 1986 to ’89. He served a Fulbright Fellowship in Chile in 1991.He was president of the Southeast Journalism Conference in 1998 and ’99.
Casey Bukro
847/869-4193
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Casey Bukro is an overnight editor for the Chicago Tribune, where he has worked since 1961.
Before becoming an editor in 2000, he was an environment writer since 1967 and was the first reporter to hold that title on a major American newspaper. He pioneered environment and natural resource reporting in America.
Bukro previously served as SPJ's national ethics chair and regional director for SPJ's region 5. He participated in writing SPJ's Code of Ethics and was awarded the Wells Key in 1983. He co-founded the Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists and is the Chicago Headline Club's ethics chair.
Bukro was born and grew up in Chicago and holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
Jerry Dunklee
203/392-5801
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Jerry Dunklee is a journalism professor at Southern Connecticut State University. He has four decades of experience as a broadcaster and teacher. He has worked as a news reporter, news director, program director and talk show host on radio, TV and cable in New Haven, New York and Boston. Dunklee has been published in the New York Times, Hartford Courant, New Haven Register, The Communicator and Quill. Dunklee is a member of the board of directors and a past president of the Connecticut Pro chapter of SPJ. He conducts ethics seminars and writing workshops for professional journalists.
Mike Farrell
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Mike Farrell serves as director of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky and as an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications. He began teaching as an adjunct in 1980 at Northern Kentucky University, continued as a graduate teaching assistant at UK in 1996, and has been a full-time faculty member there since 2000. He won the college teaching award in 2006.
He teaches reporting, editing, media law, media ethics, covering religion news and column writing.
He was a reporter, city editor and managing editor during a 20-year career at The Kentucky Post.
A native of Northern Kentucky, he earned his undergraduate degree at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees at UK, where he focused on media law. He is a member of the Bluegrass Chapter and co-adviser of the UK student chapter of SPJ.
Irwin Gratz
207/874-6570
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Irwin Gratz has been in radio news for nearly 30 years. He worked as a reporter, anchor and News Director for the number-one rated commercial station in Portland, Maine before going to work for public radio in 1992 as local anchor of “Morning Edition.”
A native of New York City, Irwin holds a Masters Degree in journalism from New York University. He has taught a college course on media ethics and has been a guest lecturer on journalism ethics and broadcast news writing.
Irwin has been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists since 1983 and has held positions as a state chapter president, a member of its national board and was the Society’s national President in 2004 and 2005.
Irwin lives outside of Portland, Maine with his wife and young son.
Liz Hansen
859/608-7681
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Elizabeth K. Hansen is a professor in the Department of Communication at Eastern Kentucky University where she has taught since 1987. She teaches Community Journalism, Media Ethics, Writing and Reporting News, Writing and Selling Nonfiction, Media Law, Public Affairs Reporting and Feature Writing.
Hansen holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from Iowa State University, and a Ph.D. in communication with emphases in mass media law and ethics from the University of Kentucky.
Hansen worked as a reporter for The Springdale News and the Arkansas Democrat in Arkansas and the State-Times in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She also is a freelance writer whose work has been published in newspapers and magazines in Mississippi, Kentucky and elsewhere. Before joining the faculty at Eastern, she taught at Iowa State University, the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Kentucky.
Hansen, who has been a member of SPJ for 30 years, is immediate past president of the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and advises the Eastern Kentucky University SPJ chapter. She serves on the steering committee for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, a multi-state, multi-institution program headquartered at the University of Kentucky. She is also a member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. She received the 2004 Russ Metz Most Valuable Member Award from the Kentucky Press Association for her work on a statewide public records audit.
Jane Kirtley
612/625-9038
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Jane E. Kirtley has been the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota since August 1999. Prior to that, she was Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia, for 14 years.
She was appointed Director of The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law in May 2000, and was named to the affiliated faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School in March 2001. During the Spring 2004 semester, she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Kirtley speaks frequently on First Amendment and freedom of information issues, both in the United States and abroad. She also writes the “First Amendment Watch” column for American Journalism Review.
Prof. Kirtley received her J.D. degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1979. She holds bachelor’s and master’s of journalism degrees from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Paul LaRocque
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Paul R. LaRocque has been an advocate of journalism ethics for many years as a newspaper editor and as a journalism educator. He is a free-lance writing coach and author, and he has taught journalism at Texas universities.
LaRocque was a member and chair of the Associated Press Managing Editors Professional Standards Committee, which later became the Ethics Committee. He and journalism education colleagues at Texas Christian University researched and published pioneer studies on media treatment of crime victims. TCU presented LaRocque the 1995 Ethics in Journalism Award in recognition of his work in that field.
He was born in Worcester, Mass., and received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. He and his wife, Paula, and toy poodle, Pompidou, live in Arlington, Texas.
LaRocque retired as student publications director at Texas Christian University, where he also taught reporting. He taught writing and other journalism courses at Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas, and Grayson County College. He tutors media and business personnel in writing and does writing seminars and workshops for organizations and companies. He was the summer writing coach and intern program coordinator for the Omaha World-Herald for seven years, and also coached writers and editors at the Arlington Morning News.
LaRocque began his newspaper career as a copy clerk for the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Gazette. He was a library assistant for the Worcester newspaper before going on active duty with the Marine Corps Reserve. He was a sports writer for the Parris Island, S.C., Marine Recruit Depot base newspaper and a sports publicist for Marine information services.
He has been a reporter and copy editor for the Lansing (Mich.) State Journal; reporter and state editor for The Milwaukee Journal; executive editor for the San Mateo (Calif.) Times; managing editor of the Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer and News; editor of the Bryan-College Station (Texas) Eagle; and editorial page editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. . And he has written book reviews for The Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
LaRocque is the author of The Concise Guide to Copy Editing: Preparing Written Work for Readers and Heads You Win: An Easy Guide to Better Headline and Caption Writing, both published by Marion Street Press.
He has been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists since 1958 and he served on the SPJ national board of directors from 1989 to 1991. LaRocque is vice president for programs of the Fort Worth SPJ chapter. He has been a director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, a national board member of the Associated Press Managing Editors, and a member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers.
Sara Stone
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Dr. Sara Stone, professor of journalism at Baylor University, teaches courses in media law and ethics and reporting and is the director of undergraduate studies for the journalism department at Baylor.
She served on a nationwide Task Force on the Ethics of the Media Coverage of the Mount Carmel standoff sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists. She was national vice president for campus chapter affairs for the Society of Professional Journalists from 1988 to 1994. She is the SPJ student chapter adviser at Baylor.
Stone has professional journalistic experience in both print and broadcast. After graduating from the University of New Mexico in 1970 she joined the staff of the Amarillo Globe-News where she served as a reporter, copy editor, night news editor and assistant night city editor over the next four-and-a-half years. She obtained a master’s degree in mass communications at Texas Tech University and taught in the journalism department at West Texas State University (now West Texas A&M) from 1974 to 1980. During the summers from 1976 through 1980 she worked as a reporter and weekend co-anchor for television station KVII, the ABC affiliate in Amarillo.
From 1980 to 1982, Stone attended the University of Tennessee where she earned a Ph.D. in communications. While a doctoral student, she worked part-time as a copy editor for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. She was named an outstanding doctoral student in the College of Communications at Tennessee, where she was a Bickel Fellow.
She has been on the faculty of the Baylor University journalism department since the fall of 1982. She has attended journalism educator workshops put on by both the American Press Institute and by the Poynter Institute. In 1987, she also was named the Outstanding Society of Professional Journalists Campus Chapter Adviser in the United States.
Peter Sussman
510/845-1311
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Peter Y. Sussman is an independent journalist and author who spent 29 years in various editing positions at the San Francisco Chronicle. He has received numerous national and local journalism and First Amendment awards, many of them for his pioneering advocacy for media access to prisoners and his defense of Dannie M. Martin, a federal prisoner who was punished for an article he wrote that Sussman published in The Chronicle.
He is the co-author with Martin of Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog (W.W. Norton, 1993) and the editor of Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (Knopf and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006).
Sussman, a longtime member of SPJ's Ethics Committee, has also served as California Sunshine chair and two terms as president of the Northern California professional chapter. Among his national awards from SPJ are the Freedom of Information Award (1990), the Howard S. Dubin Outstanding Professional Chapter Member Award (1997) and the Wells Memorial Key, the Society's highest honor for an individual member (1999). In bestowing the Wells Key, the Society cited his “instrumental” role in writing SPJ's current Code of Ethics and his advocacy of press freedoms and journalism diversity, in both hiring and coverage.
Beginning in 2002, Sussman wrote and lectured widely on wartime journalism ethics, based on specific ethical conflicts during the "war on terror" and the Afghan and Iraqi invasions. He conducted a number of workshops to reconsider journalists’ wartime ethical obligations. One product of those workshops was a proposed set of guidelines to help resolve ethical conflicts in wartime.
Further details on Sussman's career are available at peterysussman.com.
Adrian Uribarri
786/514-5758
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Adrian G. Uribarri is a staff writer at the Orlando Sentinel. Previously, he was a reporting trainee at the Los Angeles Times. He joined the Sentinel in June 2007, two years after he worked there as a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund business-reporting intern. During the summer of 2006, he was a DJNF copy-editing intern at the San Francisco Chronicle's business desk.
He has been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists since 2005, when he was elected president of the University of Florida chapter and campus representative on SPJ's board of directors. He joined the society's ethics committee in 2006. He was one of 10 SPJ members to travel to Taiwan in 2008 as part of the society's working-journalists delegation to the country.
He earned bachelor's degrees in journalism and political science from the University of Florida and has attended reporting and editing residencies at New York University and the University of Texas at Austin. He also is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was a panelist at the 2006 convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He lives in Mount Dora, Fla.
Nerissa Young
E-mail
Bio (click to expand)
Nerissa Young is a recovering print journalist employed as assistant professor of print journalism at the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. Before that, she taught three years in the Department of Mass Communications at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va., and in the journalism school at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. Young has nearly 20 years of media experience that includes radio, newspapers, freelance and journalism education. A native West Virginian, she received her bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Concord College and her master’s degree in journalism from Marshall University. She has been a member of SPJ’s national ethics committee since 1995 and spent seven years as chairwoman of SPJ’s national Project Watchdog committee. Young writes a weekly column, “The Back Porch,” about whatever tickles her momentary fancy for her former employer, The (Beckley, W.Va.) Register-Herald. At Marshall, she teaches news writing and reporting and advises the campus newspaper, The Parthenon.
|
— ADVERTISEMENT —
|
