“My Pillow” guy loses election fraud libel lawsuit, but some conservative media won’t tell you
June 16, 2025 – Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy, lost a $2.3 million libel lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. You can learn more about this case on the right-wing news site Brietbart, which used a UPI story that said that “Lindell claimed — without any evidence — that Coomer […]
Donald Trump and his lawyers fined $1 million for ‘revenge’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, but you wouldn’t know that by only reading FoxNews.com
By Chris Roberts It’s news when a former president sues his opponent, and in March 2022 news organizations such as FoxNews.com placed at the top of their website the news that Donald Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming that his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, were among those part of a conspiracy “to create a […]
CBS News ethically correct in holding its scoop on Brittney Griner release from Russia
CBS News knew a week before other journalists knew that WNBA player Brittney Griner was to be released from a Russian jail, but it held the scoop until she was safe. We’ll leave to others the politics and concerns about trading a basketball player with two cannabis oil vape pens for a Russian weapons smuggler, […]
When looking at journalism ethics winners, consider the public relations losers
By Chris Roberts The Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its annual Ethics in Journalism awards on Sept. 22, 2022. They are: ►Hannah Dreyfus of ProPublica, whose project The Liberty Way showed how Liberty University dealt with students who reported rape. ►Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose reporting revealed that a […]
Today in minimum standards: Don’t bribe
Here’s an example of a minimum standard: Don’t bribe people, whether they’re public officials or not. WPP, the world’s largest advertising and public relations company, will pay $19 million without admitting guilt in a federal claim that it bribed officials in India and Brazil. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed the company violated the […]
On the ethics of introducing anti-First Amendment bills that won’t go anywhere
A Georgia lawmaker who won’t be coming back to the House filed a bill in April 2019 that is obviously oppositional to the First Amendment. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says Rep. Andy Welch’s “Ethics in Journalism” act would write a canon of media ethics, and create a board led by the chancellor of the University of […]
It’s hard to ethically justify publishing photos of celebrity deaths
By Alley Paquin Media outlets use sensationalist headlines regularly to grab the attention of readers, encourage them to click on their website and read their stories. However, clickbait and sensationalist titles about celebrity suicides can have a disastrous effect. According to The Guardian, there was a 17 percent increase in suicides in the UK following […]
How social media fed information about a Marine’s death
By Sonya Haines When a Marine, Private First Class (PFC) Ethan Barclay-Weberpal, was murdered at Camp Pendleton in January 2018 media outlets across the nation began scrambling to gain the most up-to-date information available. The original story did not surface from the Associated Press (AP), therefore, many news outlets turned to social media to gather […]
Photos can put unnecessary tragedy on display
By lepilat — From JCM 493 Blog post 1 Imagine a family that had barely come to understand the tragic death of their son when local news stations started publishing photos from the car accident. Images spread across the community and are quickly adopted by national outlets as well. Pictures of his death are now spread across […]