Facebook’s public relations efforts raise ethical questions
The New York Times took a penetrating look at how Facebook has handled the continuing questions about how it deals with its own shenanigans, and its difficulties in stopping the shenanigans of those who would use Facebook for its own propaganda and misinformation purposes. The Times‘ “Deny, Delay and Deflect” story makes the world’s biggest […]
Re/code shows the power of solid journalism, transparency
I’ve been a fan of Walt Mossberg and Karen Swisher for nearly two decades, since The Birmingham News publisher was smart enough to buy Mossberg’s weekly “Personal Technology” column from The Wall Street Journal to publish in the “My.Tech” section that I created for The News back when AOL and Windows 95 were a thing. […]
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 […]
Bad journalism, bad ethics, or both? Poynter’s list of biggest news mistakes and Gallup’s “ethics in professions” poll may or may not be related
Two disparate pieces of annual news–Poynter’s list of the year’s media errors, and Gallup’s “honesty in professions” report–come together this week for a journalism ethics lesson, on a Poynter page with links to both stories but no connection. Poynter’s Craig Silverman released his yearly list of funny, scary, awful and goofy media errors for 2013, […]