Thinking Ethics

Enhancing reality

What is real anymore? Performances from drug taking athletes, college test scores, pre-taped fireworks (last Olympics in Beijing), photo retouching... what you see is not necessarily real. And now - there is this debate going on in the media about submitting quotes to sources for approval or correction (gasp!) before publication. Read this interesting and controversial debate on the subject by people in the media industry in Ethics Newsline, "Quote Approval".

Silver lining

Some think the people only change under pressure - well then the Rupert Murdoch media-ethics scandal about the News of the World hacking will actually have a positive outcome. The UK media is sending around all kinds of ethics memos and a new Ethics Code is being promised.

This comes not a second too soon. The UK is a beacon in CSR and fair play (soccer hooligans aside), and the comportment of a lot of its media - or gutter press - was a real aberration. Hopefully, the government will force the media to clean up its act, if they don't do it pro-actively.

Bloggers hit mainstream

The latest World Press Freedom Index 2007 from Reporters without Borders is showing that bloggers are now as much at risk as regular journalists. Read comments in the Washington Post article entitled "Crackdown on bloggers increase, survey finds" here. Top of the list are Iceland and Norway. Rock bottom is Eritrea.

NBC news exlusive or exploitation?

A lot of discussion is going around regarding NBC's airing of the video and materials on the Virginia Tech shooting. Harm to the families of the victims - inciting to copy cat effect - exploiting a scoop - real right-to-know of the public... Article in the New York Times on the subject here.

I personally don't feel the public needs to know everything in the gory details - nor has the right to request it. Some things are not for public consumption. And by airing this, NBC has given Cho Seung Hui the fame he was seeking. And if fame was the goal, and media gives in under the premise that it is "news" - thus the public has the right to know - then we can expect to see more horrific acts of this sort in the future.

The best place to go for this debate is Poynteronline, the professional resource center for journalists. NBC's decision to air was discussed by faculty members Al Tompkins & Kelly McBride, responsible for ethics at the Poynter Institute, and the podcast can be accessed here.

Ethics and performance

A lot of noise is being made of the incidence of cheating at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. In case you missed the story - article in the Washington Post here. The details of the case are not out yet, but this raises a lot of questions.

Firstly - the cheating on an exam - despicable in itself, is something we  are used to. It seems as soon as there is measurement of performance - some people will cheat. For those who believe that the importance is not being caught, there is not much we can do. Naming and shaming only goes so far.

On the institution level however, the damage is larger. The reputation of the Columbia School of Journalism will suffer, and by association, that of the students and graduates themselves. With the cost of tuition above 40'000 $ some students are worried about the value of their degree. When the actions of one individual reflect on the whole community, then each individual is responsible to the whole. Whistleblowing as a form of self- quality control is a good solution. As long as it does not degenerate into frivolous tale bearing.

For the media at large it is a very bad sign. In a globalized world where all kinds of authority have lost credibility, the media plays an important role. Granted the media community is only human, and that in the total population of journalists there is bound to be a few bad eggs, but we need to believe in journalistic standards and impartiality.

Bad things happen. Bad press follows. What will count now is how the crisis is managed, and what is learned from this. People change under pressure. A crisis can help bring things forward. Let's hope that Columbia University will come out of this with integrity, and a stronger commitment to ethics in journalism.

Blogs - watchdogs of the media

A lot of noise is going around about the doctored photos by Adman Hajj of Israeli airstrikes in Beirut. Reuters has pulled them, as well as all other photos by Adman Hajj. The "touching up" was discovered by a blogger - Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs. There is a lot of debate about ethics on the web, and that bloggers are not held to the same standards as journalists. But it is a fact that bloggers are keeping the media honest. In case you missed the beginning, check out the article in the Washington Post.

In defence of journalism

Journalism has become a rather precarious profession. The statistics for journalists killed, imprisoned and tortured make depressing reading. Then there is that casual contempt for the craft revealed by Cherie Blair signing the Hutton report for a party fund raiser, not to mention the slipping ratings for trust in the opinion polls. And all of that is before you get to the challenge to professional journalism from a combination of Google, bloggers and “citizen journalists”.

 Google News is ready willing and able to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Powerful stuff. But it begs a question about judgment. What information? How reliable is it? Can we trust you? As long as a Google search is based on how many seek it out there will be a question mark. Which is where journalism comes back into the frame. And the job it can do of offering some kind of order and analysis. Sorting the wheat from the chaff, verifying whether what is apparently real is actually so.

That requires eye witnesses – journalists be they professional or “citizen”. But it also requires experts whose role is to provide what Mark Thomson, the BBC’s Director General, has  called “critical realism”. People who accept that information comes in complex narratives and that sophisticated analysis is needed to make sense of them but who “believe it is still possible to get to the facts and form as objective and accurate a view of the world as possible.”

In a world where the pressure is on to declare whose side are you on, there is still a value in giving readers, listener, viewers, consumers and citizens the tools they need to make sense of what is going on to make their own informed choices. What Thompson called “the common ground in which different perspectives and different value systems can debate with each other and can be independently scrutinized and assessed”. Journalism – accurate, effective, impartial and reflective journalism – is essential to that.

Practice what you preach ?

Interesting article in Ethical Corporation entitled "Leaders: Transparency and the Media: Time to break the conspiracy of silence". Apparently, nobody wants to write about it. However the Media will have to become more transparent  - it is a question of trust and credibility, and ultimately their only sustainable business model.

Web journalism

Interesting post by Chris Nolan on spot-on.com on January 30, 2006 regarding various ethical issues. Among which a discussion on a free ticket to Africa - no different from print journalism in my opinion, and should follow the same rules.

Public Interest

Last weekend a semi-prominent British politician resigned because of a sex scandal exposed in a tabloid Sunday newspaper. We get the politicians and media we deserve we are told. Maybe. But the editors of British newspaper are begining to  notice that circulation is in long term decline. Could it be that that is because the public is beginning to make its own decisions about what it is interested in?

Yes, to freedom of expression. But freedom carries with it responsibility. Time for the media as a whole to enter into public debate with a wide range of interested and informed people about what justifies intrusion in the name of the public good.

It has been  suggested that broadcast news is “mostly consensus news, near monopoly collations of the tolerably important brought together at six or 10 o’clock…it is prudent and pristine” and that is the consequence of regulation. It could also be, given that all the media  codes are virtually identical, that it results from a different view of what is ethical. Not so much what is forbidden as how you chose to behave because of who you are. That might be a good place to start the debate as it implies more attention to the “self” in self-regulation.