Charleston Post and Courier vs. Battery: Reporter does the right thing and a soccer team owner overreacts
UPDATE: That didn’t take long. The United Soccer League stepped in a few hours after this happened (on April 8, 2016), and the Post & Courier has its credentials again. League president Jake Edwards’ statement spanked the club owner: “We will be taking the appropriate steps to prevent instances like this from happening again.” ************************************************************ […]
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 […]
What Cam Newton could learn about public relations from Satchel Paige
There are some things you cannot control, as Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton learned during Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016. The only thing you can control is how you respond. And Newton showed little control in one of the few things he could control – how he dealt with journalists after the 24-10 […]
Journalism has a duty to provide in-depth information
By Laura D. Testino The news never stops. Twitter never stops. And Joe Weisenthal never stops. Weisenthal, known online as @TheStalwart, left his position as executive editor of Business Insider a year ago today for a television position with Bloomberg Media. While with Business Insider, New York Magazine published an article about Weisenthal’s media consumption […]
Does Charlie Hebdo’s Syrian satire go too far?
By Leila Beem Núñez Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy. In 2006, the French satirical magazine enraged many in the Muslim world when it republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. In 2011, its offices were firebombed and damaged after publishing content of a similar nature. In January of this year, the consequences for its […]
Opelika-Auburn News: ‘Finding a way’ to anger nearly everybody
You’re working in The Opelika-Auburn News sports department late on a deadline Saturday night. You should be celebrating in your seat, even if you don’t care who won the big game your paper will blow out in Sunday’s paper. The Auburn Tigers, the team your paper cares about, has held on to beat another Top […]
If you publish mugshots and other arrest news, then you should follow up
It was a Gannett-owned newspaper that received near-universal condemnation in December 2012 when it built an online map that made it easy to find the addresses of people who had gun permits. The complaints came from all sides — gun owners and others worried about privacy, lawmakers who closed loopholes in New York and elsewhere, […]
How the updated SPJ code of ethics helps justify one newspaper’s stand against naming a sex-crime suspect
Making a decision about ethics sometimes means doing your own thing while everyone else is doing something else — in public. One news organization did this in reporting the arrest of a 49-year-old man charged with possession of child pornography in Calhoun County, Ala. Multiple news organizations reported information provided by the Alabama Bureau of […]
Facebook news feed emotion experiment was a failure of journalism ethics, too
News that Facebook manipulated content of nearly 700,000 users continues to make waves, and now a Democratic senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the company and researchers properly notified and/or debriefed users that they were being used as experimental subjects. The 2012 experiment tested whether users posted higher levels of positive […]