Is there an ethical difference in reporting the ‘chemical-related’ deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman and another person?
Had it not been Super Bowl Sunday, the world might have taken even more notice about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, found dead on Feb. 2 wit h a needle in his arm and 70 bags of heroin in his apartment. A quick Google News search this morning showed more than 5,300 articles about […]
Bad journalism, bad ethics, or both? Poynter’s list of biggest news mistakes and Gallup’s “ethics in professions” poll may or may not be related
Two disparate pieces of annual news–Poynter’s list of the year’s media errors, and Gallup’s “honesty in professions” report–come together this week for a journalism ethics lesson, on a Poynter page with links to both stories but no connection. Poynter’s Craig Silverman released his yearly list of funny, scary, awful and goofy media errors for 2013, […]
Washington Post column on Redskins name change uses different standards for in-print, online publication
By Caroline Meintzer On Oct. 7, 2013, The Washington Post ran an article in their printed newspaper that included an editorial by Dana Milbank. Milbank’s editorial called out the Washington Redskins’ team name for being racist, and he further illustrated his point by asking people to compare the Redskins name to other racial epithets. In […]
Knoxville News correctly balanced loyalties, matters of taste in coverage of deadly bus crash
By Anna Ramia Overview On October 2, 2013, a church bus traveling near Knoxville, Tenn. collided with an SUV and a tractor-trailer, killing eight people and injuring 14. The bus’s front-left tire blew out, sending the bus across the median, clipping a car before T-boning the semi-truck. The bus flipped over, and the semi caught […]
Protecting innocence or seeking truth: CNN, other media decide how much to show of Miriam Carey’s child in White House car case
By Sophia Jones The death of Miriam Carey and the Oct. 3, 2013, car chase she led capitol police on that resulted in her death, was newsworthy. The fact that Carey led the car chase, not with a weapon or any other illegal substances, but with a 14-month-old child in the backseat of her car, […]
New York Times’ ‘Vows’ column comes up short in its New Age-y glossing over of a child’s death
By Kelcey Sexton On Sept. 20, 2013, a column titled “Found, a Soul Mate” was published in the “Vows” section of the New York Times, chronicling the relationship of two yoga-lovers, Erika Halweil and Corey De Rosa, in Sag Harbor, N.Y. Halweil meets and begins regularly bumping into De Rosa, “an intense, thoughtful yoga teacher” […]
Sports Illustrated comes to Calhoun County, Alabama, with lessons in football, race and media ethics
I was a second grader at Jacksonville Elementary School in October 1972, so nobody talked to us 7-year-olds about the helmet-to-helmet hit that killed Jacksonville High’s Anthony “Speedy” Cannon on a Friday night at Wellborn High School. A decade later, as a Jacksonville High senior and sports editor of the weekly Jacksonville News, I didn’t […]
On the ethics of making mistakes while reporting during a chaotic event: Lessons from the Washington Naval Yard
By Kelcey Sexton On the morning of Sept. 16, 13 people were killed at the Washington Navy Yard, one of the victims being the shooter, Aaron Alexis. In the midst of the chaos that morning, some news organizations were forced to retract reports including misinformation given to them by sources. Two of those organizations, NBC […]
Where do we teach ethics in branding? Debbie Millman doesn’t fully say.
The School of Visual Arts in New York City is cranking up the nation’s first-ever master’s program in branding, led by Debbie Millman to help students focus on what Pacific-Standard magazine calls “the intricacies of how words, images, and design help shape public perception, opinion, and belief.” But something clanged at me in Paul Hilbert’s […]