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” […]
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 […]
‘Media’ professor asks students to lie to journalists
It would be easy to pile on Peter Chen, the government professor at the University of Sydney who created an assignment that involved pitching made-up stories to the Tharunka student newspaper. Here’s the assignment, according to the paper’s “USYD media assignment not big on ethics” editorial: Project 2: Prank Tharunka Using your understanding of the […]
Fox News says GOP politicians say sequestration is just hype, but fails to notice GOP politicians worried about sequestration
FoxNews.com’s top story is a think piece that quotes plenty of GOP folks saying that the Obama administration is making too much out of the impending mandatory cuts to federal spending. The headline: “Economic Armageddon? Republicans call sequester warnings hype.” (Or, a sexier hed from the site’s front page: Chicken Little Tactics? GOP Points to […]
This is why we love TV news.
From an anchor on WBRC-TV’s morning show. The show airs from 4:30 to 9 a.m. Too bad there’s not enough time in 3.5 hours to do any rebuttal.
Walking away for ethical reasons pays off in case of CNET reporter
We recently wrote of CNET News’ problems with its parent CBS, in which the network told its tech news company to remove Dish’s “Hopper with Sling” device as a “Best of CES” product because CBS is suing Dish over the device. CBS hasn’t backed down much, and among the fallout is that Consumer Electronics Show […]
‘Doing Media Ethics’ highlighted at iMediaEthics.org
iMediaEthics.org has a new name, new look, and an interview with a co-author of Doing Media Ethics: Theories and Practical Applications. A hat tip to Sidney Smith, a key writer at the site and a former student of mine with the University of South Carolina’s senior-semester Carolina Reporter. –Chris Roberts