shared legal representation

In this post on Poynter Online, a citizen of a small-town talks about how the town’s newspaper has very shallow coverage of the local government and also how the newspaper happens to share the same law firm with several local government agencies. It’s also been noted that those with the legal representation seem to avoid any negative coverage.

Lawyers are very important when it comes to keeping newspapers out of legal trouble, like helping them avoid libel or defamation suits. But sharing legal representation with the government that a newspaper is expected to cover and investigate is a huge conflict of interest. Lawyers have to look out for all their clients, so it probably serves them very well to be able to protect their government clients by advising the newspaper not to have any probing coverage of them. But the newspaper has more responsibility to its readers than its lawyers. The newspaper should consider journalistic concerns over overly cautious legal concerns.

speaking of…

On the topic of Michael Jackson, it seems like social networking sites are replacing news organizations for breaking news information. I found out about Michael Jackson’s death by reading the status updates on my Facebook news feed, which is the same way a lot of people heard about it. Most of us went to a news source for more details, but my Facebook friends definitely scooped CNN.

A similar incident happened to Shaquille O’Neal. He was recently traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers and found out about it through Twitter.

Will news organizations have to start tweeting as soon as they hear about a story if they want to break it first? And will this come at the cost of accuracy?

obituaries

With the very recent death of Michael Jackson, the media have got their work cut out for them balancing the good times of Jackson with the bad. Most of what I’ve seen have been very positive stories about Jackson, dealing with his great influence on music and his help bridging the gap between races.

Those who write the news are charged with reporting it without any bias. Does this count news obituaries? Or when someone dies, is the media allowed to focus more on his or her good qualities and accomplishments and ignore the bad? We all know Michael Jackson has produced his share of weird stories, but is it okay to gloss over those when covering his death? Is this the journalists’ way of honoring the dead?

individual privacy

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has gotten a lot of attention in the news lately for his disappearance to Argentina, his affair and his possible misuse of funds, but not a lot of people are questioning the methods of how the e-mails between Sanford and his lover were obtained.

It seems privacy has lost a lot of its importance in today’s culture. While everyone is twittering about their every move, invasion of privacy issues seem to be non-existent.

The steamy e-mails between the governor and his lady friend became the center of the news, probably because they were entertaining, instead of how his job was affected by the affair or his sudden trip out of the country. While it may not be moral to take a mistress, is it moral for the media to make public someone’s private e-mails if they do not have to do with his public office? Or is everything on the internet fair game if you can find it?

editing photos

As I was doing research for my paper, I came across a lot of articles dealing with the manipulation of fashion models for magazines, whether for the cover or for advertising. I’m sure most girls would agree that many of those models look too good to be true, but many don’t know exactly how much editing (if any) has gone into the photos. This doesn’t help the self-image of teenage girls who look at these magazines.

It’s easy to say from an ethical standpoint that airbrushing should be minimal if allowed at all, but don’t photo editors have some artistic freedom? Do advertisers have the right to say how flawless they want the models who are representing their products?

It’s hard to discern the line between how much editing is too much editing for photos in magazines. For news photos, it’s been suggested that any photo that undergoes editing (besides the normal kind to correct technical things like color, brightness, etc.) should be labeled as an illustration or an edited photo. But if that were the standard for a magazine, every photo would have a label like that.

Should magazines change their standards for photo editing so that young girls will see what beauty standards they should realistically try to live up to?

politicians afraid of the daily show?

The Washington Post reported today that the Obama administration is trying to have the statements Dick Cheney made to a special prosecutor during the Valerie Plame case kept secret. The reason: they don’t want future leaders to be afraid of being made fun of on The Daily Show.

The lawyer defending this idea, Jeffrey M. Smith, said that releasing the statements would discourage future vice presidents from voluntarily speaking during criminal probes because they would be concerned “that it’s going to get on ‘The Daily Show'” or be used against them by their political adversaries.

Isn’t that kind of how checks and balances work? If a leader of the country is doing something that could be used against them, that’s exactly when they need to be kept in check. In a democracy, the top positions of the government should not be out of reach of reporting or satirizing. I would hope the top government officials would be worrying about bigger things than Jon Stewart.

plagiarism in columns

Last month, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd stole a paragraph for her column from the blog of Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall. Besides the fact that I don’t believe her explanation that she hadn’t read Marshall’s blog and had just heard the thought from a friend (the paragraph was the same word-for-word except for changing “we were” to “the Bush crowd was”), this makes me wonder exactly how much columnists can get away with when it comes to sources.

During my time at the Lariat, columns were my favorite things to write, mainly because I didn’t have to run around looking for three solid sources. I could casually reference a friend and not have to worry about giving them credit. Is that okay?

Do people who write light opinion pieces have the same set of ethical standards to follow as news writers? Or is there more room for error in columns?

mug shots online

A small debate over the ethics of highlighting mug shots on a news site has come up over the St. Petersburg Times’ Tampa Bay Mug Shots site. The information posted on the site is available to the public through the sheriff’s department, but it is the presentation of the mug shots that isn’t quite kosher.

Mug shots from the last 24 hours are the main focus of the site, instead of the crimes that were committed in that time. Since these people haven’t been convicted of the crime, it’s a little distasteful to display them where the public will view them as criminals. There is a small disclaimer under “About Us” that these people have not been convicted, but it’s not emphasized.

This crosses the line into voyeurism. The public can search through these criminals based on height, age, weight, eye color and booking district. Why would the general public need to search like this? The site seems fit mostly for people to browse through photos of people whose day was worse than the viewer’s. It’s just entertainment, not news.

Mug shots are an important part of crime stories, but the mug shot should not be the story itself.

outing a blogger

A couple bloggers had been arguing back and forth online for a while, one of them using a pseudonym in order to keep his professional life separate from his personal blogging hobby ( read about it here ). One blogger revealed the identity of the one with the pseudonym, which has caused some debate in the blogging world.

I’m not sure it was a good decision to out the blogger, since it didn’t benefit anyone, but I don’t think it was unethical. I’m not even sure how many ethics there are in blogging. Anyone can blog, no matter how uninformed or unethical they are. If revealing the blogger’s identity could put him in danger in some way, maybe one could argue for the ethics of it, but as it is, anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers have no rights to confidentiality. You just have to know that if it’s on the internet, it’s free game.

school newspapers’ independence

I was reading on Inside Higher Ed about a faculty/staff newspaper at the University of Colorado that was told it was being shut down about a month ago (Silencing a Staff Voice). The newspaper was editorially independent but financed by the administration. Some of the newspaper staff believe that the cutting of the newspaper was retaliation for the reporting of a large university budget cut that the administration wished hadn’t been released to the public.

This raises the question of how editorially independent a newspaper can be if it’s sponsored by the school’s administration. In this case, the paper was free to report what it wanted, but reporting on the wrong thing could be the end of it. That doesn’t sound very independent to me.

The Baylor Lariat is supported financially by the school’s administration , which is fortunate because advertising sales were not high enough this past year to keep it alive on their own. But because of the administration’s support, the newspaper is in no way editorially independent. There are strict rules as to what the editorial board can opine about, what subjects reporters can write about and even stricter consequences for not following these rules. The job of publications director opens up every time a controversial editorial runs.

Should school newspapers that are supported by their administrations have a disclaimer admitting this fact for the sake of full disclosure? Should there be a line at the bottom of each Lariat editorial that says “This editorial is the opinion of the Lariat editorial board and does not reflect the views of Baylor administration. But the administration does have a large influence over the content of this editorial, especially if it deals with sexuality, Baptist traditions or the administration itself”? Or is it just the plight of student journalists and those that read student papers that the content they write and read is censored?