Riding the media bandwagon

One of the biggest challenges, I think, to ethics in the media is the fact that there are no ethics when no one else follows them.

What I'm referring to is the bandwagon effect.

Last week, an MSU student allegedly made threats to other students through text messages and e-mails. We got a press release from Mankato police about the incident, alleging that the student was also pulling fire alarms and that threats and alarm activations were allegedly connected. 

On the press release was his name, age and hometown. At first, I thought it wouldn't have been a problem printing the name. After all, he was facing charges of terroristic threats. But notice "facing," not charged -- yet. Is it fair to use suspects' names if they haven't been charged yet, risking their reputation and perhaps your credibility? And what benefits are there to naming suspects in a story? What happens if you say that so and so is facing charges of sexual assault, for example, and it turns out a week later that he's not guilty? Putting a story that he faces charges will probably receive more attention than the follow-up story that says judges ruled him innocent. How has his reputation been smeared in that week, and how does the credibility of your journalism and paper look if you allege that someone is guilty before ruled as such?

It's certainly a gray area. In some instances it would be suitable. I think in a high-profile case involving someone of importance, or something that would affect many people, there's no doubt that printing the name is a problem.

I thought about it more, and after consulting with Ellen and John, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth printing the name. After all, the county attorney said charges were still pending, and I never heard back from the commander on duty. 

By 6 p.m., his name was public information. KEYC TV ran the story and his name. The next day, MSU had a brief on its home page, with a link to the page of the police report. But the Reporter, being likely the most widely read and seen medium by MSU students, withheld his name. Even if he was guilty, I didn't feel confident in publishing something I wasn't 100 percent sure. I'd rather be safe than sorry, and that might mean withholding information. In this case, I didn't see a disadvantage to waiting to publish the name. As journalists, we owe responsibility to those who we write about to be fair and accurate. If I were this guy, and I was in jail awaiting charges, would I want someone accusing me of being culpable if I weren't guilty? Absolutely not. 

At the same time, it's not the responsibility of journalists to be an advocate or attorney of their subjects. Objectivity is valued and important.

So did KEYC overstep their responsibilities as journalists? What happens if the charges are acquitted? Will there be a follow up? I think it's especially important to be careful if the story is published online. Even if it is posted online and then retracted, other news organizations may have already taken the story, or distributed elsewhere, and how do you retract something you don't have access to? That information -- and reputation and perception -- will linger  for who knows how long. I don't think it's bad to be hesitant to run something that could have the possibility to damage you or someone's reputation.

At one point on Wednesday, I thought it would be ok to run the story; if KEYC already released the name, then the Reporter could too. But as mom says, "If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you, too?" Does the fact that another media outlet releases information automatically make it acceptable for other organizations to do so? Who sets the standard? 

The bandwagon effect was evident after Rissa Amen-Reif died after being struck by a car. One bit of false information by a reporter citing a police officer who stated that alcohol was a factor was carried and echoed by every other medium and thereby changing the public's perception of Amen-Reif and in effect MSU's drinking "problem." 

Even the Reporter fell victim to this incident of  "everyone else says it so it must be true."

That's a dangerous trap to fall into it, but an easy one at that. 

From a drop in the ocean to a hurricane, bloggery encompasses the masses

How should newspapers approach blogs? How close should the relationship be between blogs and the print edition, bloggers and editors, stories and opinion, comments and posts? 

"Blogging between the lines" addresses those thorny issues, after a Poynter Online discussion led to the establishment of some guidelines. The point is blogs are now and have been for a few years an inevitable part of newspapers and it's time for the uninvolved ones to stop pussyfooting around and get with the program. You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone, as Bob Dylan sings. 

The discussion didn't result in any hard and fast rules but did offer some suggestions:

"But most of the guidelines she's crafted (left) largely rely on common sense: Be brief and informal. Vary your topics. Don't write anything you wouldn't want your mother to read in the paper. Incorporate interesting, provocative reader e-mail. Be quick to correct yourself."

Blogs attract a different audience than print newspapers and they should be treated and executed as such. In other words it's not effective to translate the tone and feeling directly, but rather inject some informality, brevity and commentary to blogs. That's hard for journalists to shrug off, especially if objectivity has been beaten in their heads their whole lives. Perhaps the best way for the fogies (both old and young) to become more adept at bloggery is to start small. I mean, blogs as a whole aren't weighty things and shouldn't be treated as such. Let the Wall Street Journal and New York Times stay as they are in terms of their reporting excellence and credibility, but for the blogs that mingle in the minutiae, the pointless and the irreverent: bring them on. I've been blogging for six years now, and my first blog was indeed pointless. I hesitate to admit this to my classmates / relatives / friends / Bralapistas, but I have a tail-less manx/angora cat named Baxter. He looks and acts like a rabbit, including his little hop. Anyway, he "wrote" a blog detailing his life, and it was called "Baxter News Daily." Posts were short, quippy and involved his perspective on life, the universe and everything, and I'd need to spend a while looking for them, but my friends, and anybody who knew Baxter, was a fan. I'm admittedly a cat person, but I get along just as well with dogs. BND, as the hipsters called it, lasted only a few months, as most blogs do, but writing BND got me into writing a personal blog, which connected me with my friends while I was away at college. As if it's that far, but Facebook didn't exist back then. 

Baxter gets intense with his paper bags, and his alter-ego, Bagster, is ready to save the world from mischief and mayhem. 

We're all mojos

Why can't I do this everyday ??!

*****

In the past year or so, online readership of the Reporter has more than doubled, and it's interesting to note a few things: not much has changed on the website (though it was put on the College Publisher network Sept. 2006) in terms of technology -- still no videos, podcasts, etc.; the Reporter has been online since the early part of the decade; and advertising remains sparse. 

I think more people are accepting online newspapers and feel more confident getting their news from the web rather than a hard copy. You can tell by the numbers: the site frequently gets more than 1,000 page impressions per day, while last academic year it went over that mark only occasionally. We haven't hit 2,000 impressions yet, but I suspect that'll happen by May. I doubt the primary reason has to do with quality and the news that's happening; rather I think it has more to do with an overall acceptance of news in other mediums, and the comfort level readers have achieved. Pero qué sé shyo, maybe in fact all the little fill ads in the print edition for "www.msureporter.com" or "paper-cut free news" are effective ... ¿ ?

****

Kevin Sites' journey to war-torn countries is inspiring. Being a journalist in any developing country is risky; to be an American journalist in a developing country is even scarier; and to travel to countries affected by war is terrifying. Instead of trying to capture an overall picture of what's happening in each respective country, Sites goes personal and in-depth, interviewing the people affected and getting to know them. Sites was on the cutting edge more than two years ago; blogging and video casting while traveling (see below). I remember three years ago MSU alumnus Aaron Doering came to MSU to talk about his amazing journey: he went to the Arctic Circle on dogsled and blogged and uploaded videos, using a solar-powered satellite to upload videos. He integrated the trip with classrooms across the country. While this was more of a cutting-edge learning tool, it speaks enormously of how powerful the technology is and how conducive it is to citizen journalism. The other day I was going to do an interview, wearing a pair of khakis, and I thought of all the equipment I was carrying: voice recorder, pocket Canon Elph digi-cam, broadband cell phone, and of course a pen and notepad. I'm not rich by any means, and all of those items are under $300, but essentially I had the equivalent of a printing press in my pockets. That's not including a laptop; I could've gone out, interviewed my subjects, written the story, typed it (tediously) on the cell, uploaded it to a blog, uploaded both the audio clips and photos via their USB ports (there's got to be some cable or adapter out there that lets you do that). How powerful !!! And having a laptop would've exponentially made it easier and even more advanced. I'd have access to dozens to potentially millions (or billions !) of viewers / readers / listeners, through all the mediums: Facebook, the Reporter website, Flickr, MySpace, my blog ... and that's just to name a few. I could become a member of Oh My News, or even write stuff on CraigsList (they've got a news section). Johannes Gutenberg is spinning in his grave. 

I've embedded a video of Kevin Sites' introductory video to his year-long project. Though you can find them all on Yahoo, skip straight over to YouTube. His videos on Yahoo are irritating to watch, since they put mandatory commercials at the beginning. YouTube doesn't have all his videos, but at least they're commercial free. 

Anyway, watching a few of Sites' videos, I am reminded more that I hate the fact my life is so easy. Despite a stressful, intense job, and mounting debt, and the fact that five dozen eggs now cost $10 when they cost $5 a month ago, and the fact that a gallon of gas is about $3, I have an easy, happy life. I have little reason or right to complain — about anything — because somebody out there has it worse off than I do, and they're surviving just fine. Mexico was a humbling experience. I think every college student should be required to study abroad. And I'm not saying that in a self-righteous, pretentious manner, but in sincerity. It should be a requirement, despite the major, especially for mass comm students. Some universities already do it. Even better in the third world. I don't know if I'd have the motivation, but I'd like to work in a field picking fruits for a year in Mexico, earning $2 a day.  Honestly, though, I have talked to very, very few students who regret studying abroad, while many who never did regret not doing it. What do you think -- should it be required ?

After half a century of scholarly work, new documents about the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have been made public.

"Certainly, after 50 years, the unique historical value of these records outweighs any secrecy rationale," said Thomas S. Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, which filed the petition, with support from more than a dozen scholars. The archive, based at George Washington University, is a nonprofit group that uses the Freedom of Information Act to challenge government secrecy.

Among the historians were John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale, and Ronald Radosh, adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and past president of the Historians of American Communism.