Transcript Document

The Journalist’s Toolbox –
Ethics, Taste, Sensitivity
Current Affairs Quiz 4
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Private Lynndie England was found guilty of what?
With all the hurricanes, what might we run out of this
year?
What is Israel doing in Gaza?
Why?
Renee Zellweger is seeking what from Kenny
Chesney?
What reason does she give?
Why was Vice President Cheney in the hospital?
Gainesville is considering banning whom from large
parts of the city?
After the arrest of UT fans before the big game,
public opinion has been urging that the city do what?
Common Problems of Ethics
 Plagiarism
 Using someone else’s work without permission or
credit
 Misrepresentation
 Deception in gathering or telling information
 Issues of taste and sensitivity
 As regards such things as photos, graphic depictions,
free press/fair trial.
 The Wheaties Test
 Gifts, junkets, and meals
3
Some Examples


Jack Kelley, USA Today war correspondent,
resigned after he was accused of having
fabricated numerous stories.
Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old rising star at the
New York Times, fired in 2003 after he was
caught fabricating stories and quotes about
the Washington-area sniper case and the
Pfc. Jessica Lynch story. Editor Howell
Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd
resigned after failing to catch the fraud.



Christopher Newton, an Associated Press reporter,
was fired in 2002 for allegedly fabricating sources in
more than 30 stories.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the 1987 book The
Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, admitted in 2002 that
she took passages from three authors. She blamed
it on sloppy note-taking.
Marcia Stepanek was fired by Business Week in
2001 for allegedly lifting a story from the Washington
Post on Pharmatrak. She denied the allegations,
claiming she never read the Post story.


Michael Finkel, a free-lancer who produced a
story in 2001 for the New York Times
Magazine about slaves in Mali, confessed to
numerous inaccuracies in the story. Four
months later, in 2002, the Times issued an
apology.
Julie Amparano, a former Arizona Republic
columnist, was fired in 1999 after suspicions
grew that she fabricated sources. Amparano
claimed the paper couldn't track down her
sources because they were street people
who were hard to find. In 2001 she launched
the online publication AmericanLatino.net.


Stephen Glass, a 25-year-old former superstar at
the New Republic, fabricated quotes, sources and
stories to rise to the top. He attempted to
substantiate his wrongdoing by inventing phony
business cards, creating a bogus Website and
crafting notes from interviews that never took place.
His con ended in 1998 when a Forbes online
reporter unmasked the serial liar's "Hack Heaven"
story as a fraud. Glass received a six-figure advance
for his novel, The Fabulist, a fictional account of a
reporter whose lies end his career. The book
bombed.
Ruth Shalit, in 1995, confessed to plagiarizing
stories at the New Republic. She quit and now
works at an ad agency.
Former OU Journalism Student
Joe Eszterhas



Cleveland Plain Dealer
reporter Joe Eszterhas
fictionalized a news story
about the wife and children
of a man killed in a bridge
collapse.
His story led to Cantrell v.
Forest City Publishing Co.
(1974), a false light invasion
of privacy lawsuit.
Mrs. Cantrell was not
present during his visit to
her home.
Former OU Journalism Student
Joe Eszterhas

Eszterhas wrote:


“Margaret Cantrell will talk neither about what happened
nor about how they are doing. She wears the same mask
of non-expression she wore at the funeral. She is a proud
woman. Her world has changed. She says that after it
happened, the people in town offered to help them out with
money and they refused to take it.”
Other significant misrepresentations were contained
in details of Eszterhas' descriptions of the poverty in
which the Cantrells were living and the dirty and
dilapidated conditions of the Cantrell home.
Former OU Journalism Student
Joe Eszterhas


Eszterhas recognized
that his flair for fiction
made him better suited
to a different career.
He thus became a
once-hot screenwriter
of such movies as
“Flashdance,” “Jagged
Edge,” “Basic Instinct.”

Janet Cooke, a Washington Post reporter,
won a Pulitzer in 1981 for a story about
Jimmy, an 8-year-old heroin addict. The boy
didn't exist, and Cooke was forced to return
the prize. She resigned from the Post and
headed to France in 1985. In 1996 she was
earning $6 an hour as a counter clerk for Liz
Claiborne in Kalamazoo, Mich. Cooke
subsequently sold her movie rights for a sixfigure sum, but the film was never made.

Compilation from Insight on the News (unhidden source)
Copy Editors as Sentries
 Janet Cooke’s fraud prompted a crusade by William G.
Connolly, a former senior editor at the NYT.
 His crusade:
 Helping copy editors on the front lines of protecting
the truth.
 Connolly uses the manuscript of "Jimmy's World" in a
seminar he calls "How a Copy Editor Could Have
Averted Disaster."
 In it, he shows how editors should have seen the
inconsistencies and implausible situations and
descriptions in Cooke's article.
Copy Editors as Sentries
 Copy editors should learn to focus and look
for minefields and anything suspicious that
needs checking.
 He also wants to give copy editors the
courage to ask questions.
 According to Connolly:
 "Any responsible copy editor, faced with the kind
of questions 'Jimmy's World' raises, would stop
in his or her tracks.“*
Adapted from: “Beyond the Bounds: When to speak up, and why”
on Poynteronline
The Changing World of Journalism
 With onslaught of online media:
 Copy editors face challenges regarding
ethics and getting a good story into the
paper.
 Bend Bulletin v. Online Site
Making Ethical Decisions
Who is Matt Drudge?
Ethics in the Drudge Report
 It’s more important for a story to be
interesting than true.
 Reporting scandals is good business.
 It’s OK to pay your sources.
 It’s OK to use information that has
been obtained illegally.
Sensitivity to fair trial issues
 Journalists want to publish all they can about the
prosecution of serious crimes.
 Prior to a trial there is a lot of information available in
court documents and other statements that are public
records.
 Editors also know that most of these cases will end up
in court in front of a jury drawn from the readers of a
community’s newspaper.
 Journalists also are aware the sometime all or part of
the information in these documents may not be
admitted as evidence.
Example 1




In 2000, Robert Lawrence Staudinger was charged with
killing three people and later pleaded guilty.
Before that, Staudinger made highly incriminating
statements to police when he was arrested.
Those statements were available in court files.
The paper I worked for did not publish those statements
because:



we assumed there would be a trial
that publising that info could compromise Staudinger's Sixth
Amendment right to a fair trial
Later, my paper did cover hearings about those statements
because:


Both sides were represented.
But we did not try to get those statements into the newspaper
unchallenged.
Example 2
 This arose again a couple years later.
 Adam Thomas and four other teen-agers
were accused of killing Thomas' mother.
 Thomas also made incriminating remarks
 But my paper did not report them until a
hearing was held to consider whether they
could be used in a trial.
 Nothing stopped us from doing so.
 But we did not want to threaten someone's
right to a fair trial.
This comes up often in the media
 Some other examples from just my own
experience:
 Three sisters molested
 Native elder charged with molestation
 Identifying rape victims
 Identifying those accused of rape
 Identifying juvenile criminal suspects
 Identifying victims of crime
 Identifying witnesses to crime
Ask These 10 Questions to Make
Good Ethical Decisions
By Bob Steele – Poynteronline
1.
2.
3.
4.
What do I know? What do I need to now?
What is my journalistic purpose?
What are my ethical concerns?
What organizational policies and
professional guidelines should I consider?
5. How can I include other people, with
different perspectives and diverse ideas, in
the decision-making process?
10 Questions
6. Who are the stakeholders -- those affected by
my decision? What are their motivations?
Which are legitimate?
7. What if the roles were reversed? How would I
feel if I were in the shoes of one of the
stakeholders?
8. What are the possible consequences of my
actions? Short term? Long term?
9. What are my alternatives to maximize my
truthtelling responsibility and minimize harm?
10. Can I clearly and fully justify my thinking
and my decision? To my colleagues? To the
stakeholders? To the public?
Role of Copy Editor
 Simply put, the copy editor must establish the same
relationship with a reporter as he or she does with the
reader.
 The copy editor should be an advocate for the reader,
to insist that the reporter tell the story simply and
cleanly. And sometimes that may mean be assertive - but diplomatic.
 That means, of course, that the copy editor who is
used to putting time in front of a computer screen
rather than caring about the overall package in the
paper, who cares more about the speed of copy flow
than the readers, has to rethink the job.
 "I urge all of you to be good advocates in your
newsrooms.“
-- John Carroll, former editor of the L.A. Times
Before We Go
 This has not a lot to do with copy
editing or writing for print media.
 But it still required a focused,
ethically sensitive editor.
Did Starbucks
Screw Up?
 To some this was
clearly offensive
after 9/11
 To others this
image is innocuous
 What do you
think?
New York Post, June 18th 2002:
“Starbucks Yanks Ad Mocking 9/11”
"As a New Yorker who watched the whole
[Sept. 11] incident outside my
window…seeing the poster in
Starbucks directly across from Ground
Zero adds some resonance that
perhaps the people in Seattle did not
grasp," fumed customer Gregory
Moore, who first complained to the
Post.
Starbucks response
"We deeply regret if this ad was in any way
misinterpreted to be insensitive or offensive,
as this was never our intent. The poster,
promoting Tazo Citrus and Tazoberry
beverages, was designed to create a
magical place using bright colors and
whimsical elements such as palm trees and
dragonflies."
Starbucks Press Release 6/16/2002