Sen. Ted Cruz’s Twitter scandal reveals misguided motivations
By Maddy Ard — From JCM 493 Blog post 1 Last week saw the aftermath of two destructive hurricanes, controversy over DACA’s legal status, and threats of nuclear war. Somehow, amid these monumental events, the issue which has the internet buzzing has nothing to do with life-altering instances and everything to do with Sen. Ted Cruz’s Twitter […]
‘S-town’ podcast raises an s-load of ethical questions
By Mary Shannon Wells Even if you didn’t listen to it yourself, the murder mystery podcast “Serial,” which was monumental for both investigative journalism and the podcast platform, got a lot of media attention. Despite its popularity, “Serial” brought with it some ethical issues for the field of investigative journalism, which often hangs out in the […]
‘Angry’ Joe Vargas: an Echo in the Spiral of Silence
By Kasey Hullett Joe Vargas quit his cubicle job back in 2008 shortly after doing a review for the latest Madden franchise game. The video combined sketch and serious criticism. It showed football players tackling developers in the game studio. The video shortly went viral and soon enough the developer contacted Vargas and assured him […]
The ethics of food journalism
By: Kasey Hullett Entering into the world of food criticism and review is more precarious than I thought. Recently, there has been an outbreak of lawsuits from bad reviews on not only Yelp but blogs as well. In California, a groundbreaking law was set forth to protect Yelpers from defamation charges. You would think that […]
A Call to Arms: Using ethics in digital media
By Judah Martin I would hesitate to call myself a practicing journalist. In fact, I think such a claim would be patently wrong. In the years that I have worked as a student writer for The University of Alabama’s engineering college, I have written news releases, research articles, award announcements and “In Memorium” obituaries for […]
Amazon vs. The Times vs. Journalistic Ethics
By Emily Williams “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” That was the quote shared round the Internet in August 2015, when the New York Times published a scathing story taking down retail giant Amazon for its hyper-competitive corporate culture and unfair treatment of its employees. The story garnered massive […]
Sexism remains an issue in sports journalism in 2015
By Kevin Connell If you think you have it better off than me, there’s a good chance you’re wrong. Ask yourself, are you a male? Yes? No? If it’s the latter, then I don’t think it’s up for discussion. While I could probably use this test in most areas of our masculine culture and get […]
It’s legal to defame a dead person, but that does not make it ethical
By Kevin Connell When Vladlen Putistin took his case to court, his claim was clear: He wanted the information rectified and he wanted compensation for the damages. In his view, he believed the journalist’s statements in her published newspaper article defamed his father, thus justifying his decision to sue. In July 2001, Putistin sued the […]
Journalism schools should have a standard code of ethics
By Laura Testino In Walt Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” the cartoon candlestick character, Lumière, leads a musical number featuring the other anthropomorphic kitchenware. Soon after the song, “Be Our Guest” begins, Lumière exclaims to “Try the grey stuff, it’s delicious!” But some journalists would do no such thing: the black and white stuff is […]