Blog Archives

Ethics: A Gawker.com writer finds out the value of a link

10/26/2011

It didn't take a fertile imagination to believe one day someone would be offered money to link to a company website. Such is the value of a hyperlink.

Now a Gawker.com writer has an offer in hand to indicate it's happening.

Hamilton Nolan has laid out the correspondence that indicates an advertising agency would pay him $175 to link to a website inside one of his stories. The agency suggests it has bloggers linking to its clients, including several prominent companies, for a fee.

In the hours since the story was posted, one publication and one client have denied they are associated with the practice.

Globe and Mail on the Supreme Court of Canada hyperlink ruling on Internet defamation

10/22/2011

The Supreme Court of Canada this week ruled that the presence of a hyperlink on a website does not confer legal responsibility for its content. It means that sites can link without fear they will be liable.

The ruling has been seen as a bit of a commonsensical acknowledgment of reality --- it would be quite difficult to enforce what happens in Canada and elsewhere as a cultural norm of the Internet --- but also as another effort to interpret the Canadian version of freedom of expression.

The Globe and Mail today offers a feature on the ruling and its implications for journalistic standards.

NPR stops distributing show after host identified as Occupy Wall Street spokesperson

10/21/2011

National Public Radio has seen its share of personnel challenges in the last year or so. Its most recent involves the voice that introduces its World of Opera program, Lisa Simeone, a freelance contributor who has also been one of the representatives in media for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

NPR has faced calls in recent days to deal with her involvement. Even though she is not a journalist, the public concerns suggest NPR's reputation for impartiality is affected by her OWS work. Simeone had stepped aside from another role in recent days.

On Friday NPR settled the matter by deciding not to distribute the program any longer. Radio station WDAV in North Carolina, the originating station of the broadcast, now will handle the distribution directly.

How U.S. news media justified carrying the death video of Libya's Gadhafi

10/21/2011

Each news organization has a boundary on what it considers too graphic to present to its audience. At times that boundary shifts to more generous depiction when there is a stronger public interest at play.

In the last day many news outlets found themselves judging their own boundaries in determining if they should carry smartphone-taken video of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's dead body being dragged in the streets outside Sirte.

The Hollywood Reporter summarizes the media coverage and decision-making

Jack Shafer of Reuters on how to deal with plagiarism in the newsroom

10/15/2011

Newly arrived Reuters media writer Jack Shafer, recently of Slate, has written about the perils of plagiarism and the zero-tolerance policy that ought to accompany transgressions in a newsroom's midst.

Shafer says the real victims are not the creators from whom words are lifted, but the audience that must be denied original work. He wrote in the context of the firing by Politico of a reporter whose work appeared to plagiarize on seven counts.

He writes aggressively about the lack of mitigating circumstances available to the plagiarist seeking a second chance.

"It doesn’t matter if you pinched copy because you were tired, you were harried, your spouse or child was sick or dying, you were under deadline pressure, you jumbled up your notes, you took boilerplate or wire copy that nobody should really claim “authorship” over, you have a substance problem, you committed a cut-and-paste error, you were blinded by the warp speed of the Internet, you were a victim of the win the morning culture, you are young and inexperienced, you had two windows open at the same time and confused them," he writes.

"These aren’t excuses. These are confessions. And they mitigate nothing."

Academics, journalists ask New York Times to declare conflicts for op-ed contributors

10/11/2011

About 50 journalists and educators have written The New York Times to ask that it more clearly note the conflicts of interest for its opinion-editorial contributors.

Their letter to the public editor does not suggest that the Times is alone in the matter, but that as the "paper of record" it can lead the way in identifying the conflicts its contributors have as they write for the organization.

In this instance they have identified Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, as an example of insufficient disclosure. Rather than note that his institute receives funds from the energy sector, the Times refers to him as a senior fellow or an energy expert.

The Times does ask its freelance contributors to answer a questionnaire on their backgrounds

Craig Silverman, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, suggested that the group behind the letter has its own possible conflicts to declare. Nevertheless, he believes that there are reasonable limits on the amount of declarations practical in media and that it is not always possible to explain every detail of one's background. Still, he does call for some standardized approach.

"We should move to standardize the way contributors are asked to disclose potential conflicts of interest and relevant related information," he wrote. "Once that information is provided, we should meet a higher standard of disclosing it to the public."

Bill Keller, former New York Times executive editor, on the public editor

10/10/2011

The first public editor of the New York Times was appointed by Bill Keller, until recently the executive editor, and in his new role as columnist Keller is getting a little expansive about the role and impact of the newsroom watchdog.

Keller says he hasn't always agreed with the newspaper's public editor but has come to accept that person's role as important in the operation. He likens it to proctology and notes even that can be beneficial. That being said, his enthusiasm for the role has diminished over the years, even though he recognizes the "good faith" intentions of that person.

Keller was interviewed at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum on the standards of journalism. He said the newsroom has its liberal bias on several social issues but maintains the equivalent of a legal discipline in its work.