Media Ethics Prominent in Week’s News
Jan 5th, 2009 • Posted in: NewsAt issue: proposal to bail out newspapers, negative impact of new media technologies, and critical report saying media fanned flames in Mumbai terror attacks
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Questions about the role and conduct of the press were raised in the international media last week. Among the stories:
- Connecticut lawmakers are considering a state bailout to save a local newspaper, but some are skeptical, arguing that government aid to the press crosses an ethical line. Reuters reports that the Bristol Daily Register is about to collapse under a mountain of debt, and some state legislators want to use government money to save it, saying that the city of 61,000 people is largely ignored by big media in neighboring Hartford. But as Reuters notes: “Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.” Or as a journalism professor interviewed by Reuters put it: “You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it.”
- New media technologies offer great promise, but also pose a considerable risk, says one of the nation’s premier media ethicists. The Poynter Institute’s Bob Steele, writing in the Nieman Watchdog, a Harvard University press-and-society publication, argues that the race to garner page views has caused an erosion of journalism’s core ethical values. “The blogs, Tweets, social networking, citizen-submitted content, and multimedia storytelling that are the tools and techniques of the digital era offer great promise,” Steele writes. “They also, when misused, present considerable peril.” As examples, Steele points to the stock tumble caused by an erroneous report on a user-generated news website claiming that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a major heart attack. He also cites the “ethically problematic” practices associated with live-blogging tools, such as Twitter, which was used by the Rocky Mountain News to generate widely criticized on-the-spot coverage of a three-year-old boy’s funeral.
- An independent group that monitors media in India and Pakistan has concluded that coverage of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks was often reckless and irresponsible. The South Asia Media Commission said little care was taken to verify facts, coverage was biased, and reporters showed little sensitivity toward victims, according to a report from the Press Trust of India. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, critics charged that the nonstop coverage by dozens of television channels had spread rumors, encouraged publicity-seeking journalists, and put police at a disadvantage by leaking tactical information during live telecasts.
Sources: Reuters, Dec. 31, 2008 — Press Trust of India, Dec. 31, 2008 — Nieman Watchdog, Dec. 25, 2008.
For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, Dec. 8, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 8, 2008 — Related Newsline story, June 16, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 28, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007.
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