‘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 […]
Cartoonist fired for biting the hand that feeds his publication
A herd of media are writing about Rick Friday, who was fired from Farm News, a weekly publication of The Fort Dodge (Iowa) Messenger, after it published this cartoon pointing out that the CEOs of three men who run major farming-focused corporations earned a combined $53 million in 2015, as much as 2,129 Iowa farmers. […]
Resources to talk about the Virginia TV killings
Want to talk about the WDBJ-TV Virginia live-on-TV shootings that occurred Aug. 26, 2015? The Newseum provides an excellent set of questions and lines of thinking related to what to show and not show. Other sources: * A larger argument comes from the University of North Carolina’s Zeynep Tufekci, writing in The New York Times that […]
On the ethics of doing public relations for the Russian Federation
A Bloomberg story reminds us why transparency is an imperative for ethical communication–but sometimes a bad thing for public relations companies who might rather not tell us that they are working for governments that would not allow them to exercise the same freedoms they have in the United States. The reporters searched federally required disclosure […]
On watching a media student steal from a restaurant (or, ‘How can I successfully teach media ethics when they don’t have much to start with?’)
The boy wanted sushi, so we ended up sitting next to a pair of university students around the grills of a Japanese restaurant where the chef puts on a show whether you want it or not. The chef was clearly enamored of the two girls, who ended up with much more food than me and […]
Spongebob Squarepants episode teaches journalism ethics, sort of
Some say the journalism business is so bad that reporters have to work a fast-food job to make ends meet. It’s just the opposite for Spongebob Squarepants, the fry cook turned reporter in “Krabby Kronicle,” a 2008 episode that raises a semi-serious ethical dilemma. (Jim Romenesko highlighted the episode after seeing a Tweet from Hollywood […]