Transcript Folie 1

Photo: imago/ecomedia/robert fishman
Ethical Challenges in Journalism and Media Accountability
Recent cases
By Raluca Radu
Key issues in journalism –
Cases and stakeholders’ reactions
See case studies for
more details
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July 2013
Freedom of expression / Italy - Sallusti
Freedom of information/ Switzerland - YQM
Telling the truth / Finland - bullying
Copyright / Fair use/ Romania - GSP
Protecting sources/ Romania - PM
Private life/ United Kingdom – phone hacking
Stereotypes / Hate speech/ Switzerland - Roma
Conflict of interests – surreptitious advertising/ Finland - L’Oreal
Conflict of interests – media campaigns for political reasons/
Romania - OTV
Session 2 – Recent cases
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A Case from Italy: Freedom of expression & state intervention
• In September 2012, the Italian journalist Alessandro Sallusti was sentenced
to 14 months of prison, for libel and (repeated) omitted control
(Sallusti had faced similar charges in the past)
• In 2007, a comment about an abortion performed on a 13-year-old girl,
signed with the pseudonym ‘Dreyfus’, appeared in Libero. As Libero said, the
girl entered a psychiatric clinic after the operation
• “If there was a death penalty in Romania, it should be applied in this case –
for the parents, for the gynecologist, for the judge”, commented ‘Dreyfus’.
The judge of the case filed charges.
• Sallusti was the editor and was considered to be responsible for the
publication
July 2013
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A Case from Italy: Freedom of expression & state intervention II
• Sallusti – ready to go to jail, but the
sentence is unjustified and would
have been more expectable in
repressive countries such as Syria
or North Korea
• "The ruling defeats and kills
freedom of expression" - Franco
Siddi, secretary of FNSI, an Italian
journalists union
• "medieval, unconstitutional and
contrary to the freedom of the press"
- Alessandro Pace, a constitutional
lawyer
• “outrageous” Reporters Without
Borders
July 2013
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Sallusti in custody. Foto:
http://www.informarezzo.com
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A Case from Switzerland: Freedom of information
• Swiss MAI ‘Quality of the Media Yearbook’, launched 2010 by University of
Zurich sociologist Prof. Kurt Imhof & research team to promote debate on
the quality of the media and to raise awareness of the importance of high
quality journalism. The quality of democracy depends on the quality of
the communication of information to the public by the media
• Findings: news coverage in Switzerland had become far more superficial;
mostly limited to breaking news; online versions - click oriented and inferior
to their printed counterparts
• Reactions in Switzerland
• 2010, 2011 - mainly negative, especially from yellow press; very
controversial debates
• 2012 - non-reporting
• Discussions by academics and members of the public on quality journalism
July 2013
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A Case from Finland: Telling the truth
• 2011: Finnish writer started online campaign based on the alleged suicide of 15year-old schoolgirl after years of bullying
• Wide interest on social media and mass media resulting in a book about the girl,
called ‘Elisa the Angel’
• The credibility of the writer was questioned in social media and by two
freelancers. Result: The story was fabricated. Police started an investigation into
a possible case of fraud
• Author: “artistic license; turned real events into a partly fictional account”
• Reaction in Finland
• National debate about responsibilities of authors & media outlets
• Chairman of the Union of Finnish Writers - writers should be explicit in their use of
artistic licence
• Council of Mass Media - more thorough fact-checking needed
July 2013
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A Case from Finland: Telling the truth II
• Some journalists objected the
CMM decision:
• school bullying is a real
social problem and it was
crucially important to bring it
up to the public.
Elisa, the Angle. Foto: http://www.helsinginuutiset.fi/
• Police did not press charges
• The authours of the article won the Bonnier Best Story 2012 Award
• No complaints were filed to the CMM about any media outlet’s
reporting in the case
• Debate about journalistic ethics and fact-checking still surfaces from
time to time
July 2013
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A Case from Romania: Copyright/Fair use
• Andrei Niculescu, a Romanian sports journalist, was accused by
readers of having published a substantial number of international
football pieces containing unattributed quotes, ideas and
expressions from articles of foreign authors, especially from Spain
• The management of Gazeta Sporturilor (GSP) conducted an internal
investigation in 2012, by comparing texts that appeared in multiple
foreign blogs and sites.
• Reactions in Romania:
GSP suspended the contract with Andrei Niculescu
July 2013
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A Case from Romania: Copyright/Fair use II
• GSP apologised to foreign journalists and
bloggers, whose work was not used fairly
• They should have had better filters for the
journalistic articles they published
• Niculescu stated: “A stage of my life is
concluded… Never trust anyone. Especially
the people you admire. They are the ones
who will stab you in the back. I leave them
the pleasure to investigate from whom I took
this quote”
Plagiarism
checker
• Members of the audience hope a sports TV
channel will also end its contract with
Niculescu
July 2013
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A Case from Romania: Protecting sources
• The accusations of plagiarism brought in 2012 to the Romanian prime
minister Victor Ponta – a ‘plot’ in which TVR INFO, which belongs to the
Romanian public service media, was involved
• The site of TVR INFO was the first that published a set of documents with
comparisons between the texts of Ponta’s works and the works of the
authors. The source was anonymous
• Reaction in Romania:
Several commissions, from the Ministry and from the University of Bucharest,
had opposing views on the case. The issue was widely debated in the media,
both in Romania and abroad
• The management, close to the PM party, decided to close both TVR Info, the
TV station, and the associated site, for financial reasons. Several journalistic
investigations were conducted to reveal the source of the information about
plagiarism
July 2013
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A Case from Romania: Protecting sources II
• All members of the team that worked for TVR Info, but one, lost their jobs
• The public focused more on the issue of the plagiarism rather than on the
source of the information. It was a major public interest event
• The former team of TVR Info was awarded a symbolic prize for their courage
of telling the truth despite the consequences
• The case appeared in an annual review of Active Watch, member of the
Reporters without Borders network.
• The documents can be found on other sites and the source is still
protected
You are fired!
July 2013
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A Case from UK: Private life
• 2006 – UK’s Information Commissioner: 305 journalists from 32 newspapers
and magazines employed private investigators to obtain about 4,000 items of
personal information
• 2008 – a News of the World editor and a private investigator were jailed, for
intercepting phone messages of the Royal Household
• Since 2011 - more than 100 arrests, closure of UK’s oldest and biggest selling
weekly News of the World (2.6m, News International, R. Murdoch), after the
hacking of the mobile phone of a murdered teenager was exposed by The
Guardian
• The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press
July 2013
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Private life
JK Rowling. Photo: guardian.co.uk
“The effect [of journalists] on me and our family life
truly cannot be overstated. We were literally driven
out of the first house I had ever owned (which
faced almost directly onto the street) because of
journalists banging on the door, questioning the
neighbours and sitting in parked cars immediately
outside the gate. Old friendships were tested as
journalists turned up on their doorsteps, and offered
money for stories on me.” – J K Rowling’s
statement to Leveson Inquiry
“What we did not appreciate was the extent to which the
newspapers would intrude on our private turmoil and how
little control we would have over where the lines were drawn in
this respect. We did not have any experience in dealing with
the media and we had to make a lot of difficult choices, without
the benefit of professional advice and at an extremely harrowing
time in our lives.” – statement of parents of murdered teenager to
Leveson Inquiry
July 2013
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Little
control
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A Case from Switzerland: Stereotypes
‘The Roma are coming: Raiding Switzerland’
They come, they steal and they go.
Roma families from Eastern Europe are
responsible for a large part of the increasing
crime tourism
- Weltwoche, Switzerland, 2012
‘In the outskirts of a Kosovar city, a group of Roma kids live with their families in
a slum built over a garbage dump… These Roma children only know life in
the dump, a poisoned and diseased playground.’ Original caption for the
image
July 2013
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A Case from Switzerland: Stereotypes II
• Swiss and international reaction
• use of the picture & articles were discussed widely, quite negatively, in
Switzerland, but also abroad - Germany, UK (BBC)
• picture usage – racist, discriminating Roma (Gypsy)
• readers filed charges against the ‘Weltwoche’. The office of public prosecution
started an investigation against the weekly magazine
• In Germany, the Council for Germany's Roma went to court and tried to ban
the magazine in the country
• ‘Zürcher Prozesse’ (‘Zurich trials’) by Swiss theatrical artist Milo Rau
• a court room in a theater
• more than twenty experts (media researchers, journalists from
‘Weltwoche’, representatives of ethnic minorities, politicians)
• editorial decisions publicly discussed in front of a jury, a real defendant
and a lawyer, as public attorney
• ‘Weltwoche’ - completely absolved
July 2013
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A Case from Finland: Conflict of interests – Surreptitious advertising
• In October 2012, the Finish women’s
magazine ‘Gloria’ published a
supplement with a focus on cosmetics
and make-up products by L’Oreal – the
company was the main advertiser
• A journalist in the competing women’s
magazine, ‘Anna’, considered the
supplement as an advertorial rather
than journalism and filed a complaint to
the Council of Mass Media (CMM)
Journalists’ jobs are linked to advertising.
Photo: http://www.behance.net/
• The complainer’s name was leaked; she was told by her editor-in-chief and the
publisher’s representative that her complaint had endangered the
company’s advertiser relations. The journalist withdrew her complaint, but
was asked not to come back to work for six months
July 2013
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A Case from Finland: Conflict of interests – Surreptitious advertising II
• CMM took up the complaint despite the withdrawal to highlight the autonomy of
the media and their independence of advertisers
• Reaction in Finland:
• Brief public discussion about editorial policies, especially the influence of
advertisers on journalism
• Debate on journalists’ right to file complaints without fear of sanction
• The journalist accepted the offer of a half-year leave after negotiations
• CMM ruled that ‘Gloria’ had violated good journalistic practice
• CEO of ‘Gloria’ - the verdict would put the entire genre of lifestyle journalism
in jeopardy. She left the company a month after the CMM verdict
• CMM - journalists and marketing departments should discuss future ways of
working to satisfy financial needs without compromising journalism
July 2013
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A Case from Romania Conflict of interests - Media campaigns for
political reasons
• In 2012, OTV was sanctioned several times
by Romanian National Audiovisual Council
(CNA) for continuous political campaign
for Dan Diaconescu’s own party, the
People’s Party, outside the electoral period.
OTV is an example of tabloid press, which
people watch for entertainment
• The CNA ended the broadcasting license for
OTV television in January 2013. This is the
ultimate punishment, if a TV station fails to
follow the audio visual law
OTV - A television banned by
[President] Băsescu - capture from
youtube.com
• The TV station proved to be a powerful political instrument – People’s Party is now the
third Romanian strongest party
July 2013
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A Case from Romania Conflict of interests - Media campaigns for
political reasons II
• Since 2000, when it was first launched, OTV had been considered as a no rules TV
station. Dan Diaconescu was jailed several times for blackmail
• In journalism schools OTV was presented as a classic example of what not to do
• DD & OTV - recurring subjects for humorous shows
• In 2002 CNA suspended OTV its license for hate speech. Both suspensions were
presented by Dan Diaconescu as political retaliations
• Part of the Romanian press - the fines given by CNA to OTV led to bankruptcy
• Part of the audience of OTV - a defender of the public interest has been muzzled
• Given the opportunity the OTV audience would return to a similar TV program
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Further reading
Christians, C. G., Fackler M., Richardson, K. B., Kreshel, P., Woods, R. H., 2011, Media Ethics: Cases
and Moral Reasoning (9th Edition), Pearson.
Couldry, N., M. Madianou and A. Pinchevski, 2013, Ethics of Media, Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire,
New York.
Fengler, S., T. Eberwein, G. Mazzoleni, C. Porlezza and S. Ruß-Mohl (ed.), 2013, Journalists and
Media Accountability. An International Study of News People in the Digital Age, Peter Lang: New York.
References
Sallusti: www.telegraph.co.uk, rsf.org , www.ilgiornale.it
QYB: www.foeg.uzh.ch/jahrbuch_en.html
Niculescu: www.gsp.ro
Roma child: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17687435
Phone hacking : ‘A royal tussle between press freedom and state-sanctioned self-regulation’, by Mike
Jempson, in MediaAcT Final Research Report, 2013; http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk;
N. Couldry, M. Madianou and A. Pinchevski (2013), Ethics of Media, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire,
New York.
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