Tag Archives: ethics

Review: Online Journalism Ethics (Friend & Singer)

4 Replies

Book coverOnline Journalism Ethics: Traditions and Transitions
Cecilia Friend and Jane B. Singer
ME Sharpe, 2007, 245 pp., ISBN 0765615738

On April 16, 2007, a 23-year-old man shot and killed 32 people at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As the shootings were taking place students reported what was taking place on blogs, mobile phones, instant messaging, Flickr, Wikipedia, and social networks.

As they did so, journalists started arriving in search of information and reaction. Some “lurked”, taking what they found and publishing it elsewhere; others engaged in “digital doorstepping” – asking students for their experiences and feelings, or if they’d be willing to be interviewed on camera.

While traditional journalists saw the material as being ‘in the public domain’, many students reacted angrily to the invasion of what they saw as ‘their’ space. It was an example of worlds colliding, highlighting the new ethical challenges facing journalists as new media technologies enabled the distinction between public and private, and between publisher and audience, to collapse.

In this context, Friend and Singer’s book on the ethics of online journalism is hugely welcome. Continue reading →

Citizen journalism: some conclusions from the European Bloggers Unconference

3 Replies

Consider this my first attempt at a photoblog entry. For those who prefer video or text you can see both at http://www.ejc.net/seminars/picnic_2007_3

What is citizen journalism

Continue reading →

Blogs and investigative journalism: looking for leads and a co-author for a book chapter

6 Replies

I’ve been asked to write a book chapter on ‘Investigative journalism and blogs’ for the next edition of ‘Investigative Journalism’. If you know of any examples where blogs have been used for investigative journalism, or useful contacts, please let me know.

I would also particularly welcome anyone who is interesting in co-authoring the book chapter via a wiki. Continue reading →

Facebook journalism: your headlines on their page

2 Replies

I was speaking at an event last week on social networking when a fellow panellist made the point that Facebook was, in many ways, an operating system, and that we may in years to come think it archaic that Windows/Mac OS didn’t know who our friends were, interests, feeds, etc. 

Now South Africa’s Mail and Guardian shows a glimpse of the future on that platform: an application to let Facebook users add their headlines to their profiles. Of course, an RSS feed might do the same thing, but this makes it easier.

In other FJ (that’s Facebook Journalism) news: Reportr.net on Using Facebook profiles as a source for stories (and the ethics of exposing the voting intentions of the 17-year-old daughter of a presidential candidate):

“Part of the issue is what Danah Boyd has called intended audiences. When someone posts information on a social networking site, they may not intend for the material to be consumed beyond the intended audience of their friends.”

Online journalism’s must-read blog posts

21 Replies

Shane Richmond is asking for contributions to a list of classic blog posts on online journalism. For some reason my comments don’t seem to have gone through, so here’s my list of the essential reads for online journalists:

  1. For an overview of the forms and possibilities of online journalism: Jonathon Dube’s Online Storytelling Forms
  2. For a mind-blowing insight into the journalistic potential of computer technology: Adrian Holovaty: A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
  3. For reflection on how the online news environment changes the nature of journalism: Dan Gillmor’s The End of Objectivity (Version 0.91)
  4. For reflection on journalism ethics in the MySpace/Facebook/UGC/digital doorstepping era: Robin Hamman’s posts virginia tech bloggers: approach and confirm or link and disclaim? and his coverage of a debate on virginia tech coverage
  5. For a sliding scale of ideas on how to involve the audience: Steve Outing’s The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism
  6. For a succinct and clear explanation of moving from the TV mindset to an understanding of online video: Andy Dickinson: Moving from TV to Online
  7. For a quick list of tips when moving into video: Newslab’s Tips for Photographers
  8. For an outline of the possibilities of Flash for interactive storytelling, and experiences of its use: Mindy McAdams’ Flash journalism: Professional practice today 
  9. For a step-by-step overview of how to treat a story in a multimedia way: Mindy McAdams’ Journalism stories: A multimedia approach Parts 1, 2 and 3.
  10. For a conceptual exploration of interactive storytelling: The Elements of Digital Storytelling
  11. I’ll agree with Richmond’s inclusion of Ross Mayfield’s post on his own blog: What makes wikis work
  12. And it pre-dates blogs, but answers very effectively that recurring question of “Is blogging/wikis/databases/broccoli etc. etc. journalism?”: G. Stuart Adam’s Notes Towards a Definition of Journalism

Speech to the 8th Vienna Globalisation Symposium

3 Replies

Last week I was in Vienna speaking to the most diverse audience I’m ever likely to address: 120 or so people from organisations including the European Commission, Amnesty International, the European Space Agency, the United Nations, Princeton University and the World Trade Organisation, as well as students from universities in Serbia, Ukraine, Italy, Poland, Germany, Austria, and America.

They were there to attend the Vienna Globalisation Symposium, and I was speaking as part of the first panel, on ‘Web 2.0: The return of the internet’. The topic of the presentation was Blogs and journalism – click on the link for the Word document. It’s 15-20 minutes long. I may upload audio and/or video later.

Marie Claire podcast raises product placement ethics

2 Replies

Women’s Wear Daily (not my usual breakfast reading matter) has raised the issue of magazine podcasting ethics separating advertising and editorial after Marie Claire’s Unilever-sponsored “The Masthead With Marie Claire” podcast featured repeated mentions of the company’s products.

“sponsored by Unilever with occasional chipping in by Diesel as “patron.” … Nearly every one of the eight segments so far has prominently featured Unilever beauty products in scenes with the magazine’s editors, and the most recent one included footage of the Diesel New York show, with Marie Claire fashion director Tracy Taylor explaining in the podcast, “What I love about Diesel….”

The article goes on to quote American Society of Magazine Editors board member Jacob Weisberg as saying “[Advertising] can’t include the editors and shouldn’t be produced by the editors.”

Of course fashion and women’s magazines have never been renowned for their editorial integrity or independence. And Marie Claire seem to think they can avoid the issue by claiming “ASME guidelines do not extend to podcasts and Webisodes.”

“‘The Masthead With Marie Claire’ is a podcast that is designed as a television show produced for the Web. From reality shows such as ‘The Apprentice’ to scripted shows like ‘The Office,’ brand integration is the norm.”

Nice try.

Marlene Kahan, executive director of ASME, disagrees. “The general codes do apply” to digital productions by members, she says.

“All online pages should clearly distinguish between editorial and advertising or sponsored content,” the ASME guidelines read. “A magazine’s name or logo should not be used in a way that suggests editorial endorsement of an advertiser. The site’s sponsorship policies should be clearly noted, either in text accompanying the article or on a disclosure page, to clarify that the sponsor had no input regarding the content.”

Seems pretty clear to me.

Virginia Tech: more on that ethics question

5 Replies

I’m still not entirely comfortable with the way blogs/MySpace have been raided by journalists, despite Tony Harcup’s ‘public domain’ defence in my earlier post. The BBC Manchester blog puts it well:

“I’m told by people with years of experience in news journalism that there is nothing at all unique about dozens, perhaps hundreds, of journalists working the phones, sending emails and doing whatever they can to secure stories from the victims of tragic incidents such as this. Nothing unique, that is, other than the fact that because many of those approaches, including a particularly unfortunate one asking the blogger to “shoot” the journalist an email, are, like the blog itself, published there in public for everyone to see. And guess what, just as some LiveJournal users were upset at the use of the post by the mainstream media, some journalists weren’t too happy when they saw that lots of blogs were now quoting them.

“Onemanandhisdog makes an interesting point about the public yet private nature of LiveJournal posts that, I think, is quite worthy of discussion here. He writes:

“”I can’t help wondering if the nature of Livejournal is partly behind the outrage….the characteristic of Livejournal that triggered the creation of this blog was its community nature. Its system of “friends” and the “friends page” means that most Livejournals are read through Livejournal – it’s for talking to a circle of friends, not to the world at large. Barging into that community and asking for comment feels not unlike barging into a pub and asking somebody for comments.”

“Now sure, journalism has a long and dishonourable tradition of doorstopping the victims of tragedies. But in the digital age, the communities around the victims have voices to express their outrage at the media’s behaviour – and that’s what we’re seeing here.”

“I think it’s a valid point. People can and do use LiveJournal, Myspace, MSN spaces and the dozens of other social networking sites to publish content online. But, for many of them, it’s likely they do so only with the intention of reaching an audience consisting of their friends.”

Virginia Tech shooting: another citizen journalism milestone?

52 Replies

Poynter Online has a mind-boggling roundup of how students at Virginia Tech have told their story through mobile video, blogs, and forums. Unlike previous user generated content milestones like 9/11 and the Asian tsunami, this story took place in the heart of the new media generation, and the resulting coverage is more comprehensive, more accessible, and takes in more new media forms, including social networking. “Look at this collection from CNN’s I-Report.,” urges Poynter:

“Students text messaged one another while hiding under desks. Read some of those messages here.

“Some students are gathering on Facebook. CollegeMedia.com has a collection of cell pictures taken by students. More than 150 tribute groups have formed on Facebook.

“Other students went right to their blogs and wrote about what they saw.”

As this generation ages it’s reasonable to expect such coverage to become the norm, and this presents two challenges for journalists: 1) the need to develop the awareness of, and skills to find, this material; 2) in the face of such comprehensive and accessible first-person reporting, the need to develop new roles, perhaps as gatewatchers, facilitators and filters rather than reporters.

Then there’s a third issue: ethics. When reporting on the MySpace and Facebook content of murdered students, how far can journalists go? Is it OK to quote dead students’ ‘About Me’ sections? Channel 5 did so last night, including one who was summed up by her favourite flavour of ice cream and the fact that her “favourite colour is blue”.

Tony Harcup, a writer on journalism ethics, told me “my gut reaction is that it is perfectly acceptable to quote from the About Me sections that people have placed in the public domain. It’s not as if a journalist has broken into a dead person’s house and stolen their private diary.” But when we live our lives in the public domain, do our virtual selves have different rights? I have no answers, I’m just posing the question.

UPDATE: Shane Richmond includes these points in his blog. He slightly misunderstands my second point above, and I’ve posted a comment clarifying this.

UPDATE 2 (Apr 21 07): I’ve posted a further post on the ethics issue.