Media ethics volume I: What's wrong with this picture?

Plagiarism, fabrication, bias, fallacies. As we have seen, whether it's intentional misconduct or unintentional violations of sound journalistic practices, numerous ethical problems have the potential to exist when writing for print or broadcast news. Yet it's not just words that we have to be careful with, but photographs as well. Thanks to amazing software programs like Photoshop, it's incredibly easy to alter a photograph to make someone or something appear better (or worse). While that's fine for something like a senior picture, it's completely unethical to alter a photograph or video accompanying a news story. You wouldn't change someone's quote. Yet some people don't see anything wrong with changing a photograph. Remember, photojournalism must abide by the same ethical principles of truth and accuracy.

Recently political satirist and TV host Jon Stewart criticized Fox TV's Sean Hannity for playing with the facts, the visual facts that is. Click here to watch the clip from the show. Pay close attention to the video and what Stewart is calling Hannity out for. (By the way, Hannity later apologized for what he called an "inadvertent mistake".)

Photo courtesy of mnstate.edu

Who's in control?

We learned from the Tinker and Hazelwood cases that while students DO have First Amendment rights like everyone else, school administrators nonetheless DO have the right to prior review because most high school newspapers are not considered a "public forum".

But remember that sources do not reserve the right to review your work before it is published. Just because a source may be an adult or a teacher or someone in authority does not make them entitled to review your work before publication. However, a source does have the right to ask to see his or her quotes before you use them in an article. Most people don't ask to do this, but you should always comply with that type of request if asked. So if someone you've interviewed asks or demands to see your article before it's published, simply explain to them that "that's not our editorial policy." (In other words, that's not the editorial policy of news organizations, including school publications, that abide by sound journalistic practices -- not to mention the First Amendment.)

Click here to read an interesting article about a recent situation involving a private school that showcases this type of dilemma. Do you think the school did the right thing?

Bias in the News

We're going to be examining the problem of bias in the news. You're probably thinking, "I'm not prejudiced. So I would never be biased in my reporting or writing." But bias isn't the same thing as prejudice. Prejudice is a deliberate negative feeling or attitude. Bias is a tendency to assume a certain viewpoint, and bias is not always deliberate. And even if your work is free of bias, you need to be a critical observer of the news media and have a greater understanding of bias in reporting. Because it happens. All the time.

Bias can occur in many ways, particularly through:

•  Selection and omission of specific details
  
•  Placement of a story
•  Choice of sources
•  Word choice and tone
•  Headlines
•  Photos and camera angles
•  Captions
•  Names and titles
•  Statistics

So we'll explore how and why bias occurs. For now, click here to examine how two articles cover the same news event in much different way.