In 1978, Anthony McKinney, then 18 years old, was sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in prison after being convicted of murdering Donald Lundahl. Thirty-one  years later, Northwestern University journalism students working with the school's Medill Innocence Project discovered enough new evidence to convince Judge Diane Cannon in Chicago that McKinney's case deserved another day in court. As Professor David Protess, director of the Medill Innocence Project,...Go to full story

If you were wondering why we need ombudsmen (or even what the heck ombudsmen are), Jeffrey Dvorkin, formerly of NPR has the answer for you in an October 13 post at the Common Ground News Service.

In his essay, Dvorkin discusses the strengths of the position (also called a readers’ representative or public editor) in a changing news environment, and advocates continued hiring of ombudsmen, especially for coverage of the Middle East. Dvorkin, Executive...Go to full story

StinkyJournalism has been working to critique and correct bad vaccine-reporting this fall flu season. But this time, instead of sensationalism or pseudoscience, it’s actually an example of excellent journalism that has brought some new ethical questions to light. Just as bad medical reporting can be dangerous for the public, great medical reporting, unfortunately, can sometimes be dangerous for the reporter. Such is evident in the attacks and threats made recently against...Go to full story

In his new book, The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News, former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Gene Foreman, takes a new approach to journalism ethics: the case study.

And he's not alone. Two other upcoming books, Making Hard Choices in Journalism Ethics, by David E Boeyink and Sandra L Borden (which will be released this coming February), and a book put together by the Society of Professional Journalists (which...Go to full story

On Thursday, September 24, 2009, 16-year-old Derrion Albert was beaten to death outside a community center in Chicago's Far South Side neighborhood of Roseland.

The motivation behind Albert's death remains murky -- most reports claim that he was simply caught in the middle of a fight involving dozens of students from nearby Fenger High School, apparently members of two rival gangs. But what made this incident -- in an area plagued by high crime rates --...Go to full story

We’ve written before about the potential harm done when the media report shallowly on medical issues, quote “experts” who aren’t, or give false balance and fluff treatment to sources whose health arguments are unfounded or even dangerous. Now a particularly scary example of this bad journalism has been pointed out in the British magazine The Spectator, which recently scheduled and then cancelled a debate on a film that mistakenly and dangerously questions...Go to full story

In an ongoing look at CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong, StinkyJournalism opened a discussion with ethics expert Bob Steele at the Poynter Institute. Steele has written about how journalists can avoid or mitigate the competing loyalties that might turn into conflicts of interest. He has also written about Dr. Gupta in the past, exploring the question of competing loyalties in his work as a doctor and his history with...Go to full story

On October 27, a story posted at the Huffington Post announced the news “Scalia on Brown v. Board of Education: I Would Have Dissented.”

The post described how in a University of Arizona talk, Supreme Court Justice Scalia had apparently said that if he had been on the high court in 1954, he would have disagreed with the historic decision ending school segregation. It turns out, Scalia didn’t say that at all (more on this later).  Megan...Go to full story

The prank-press conference held last week by farcical activists the Yes Men has reopened the “speed versus accuracy” debate, an argument that has taken place in journalism for a good 200 years. Craig Silverman wrote about the issue in the Columbia Journalism Review's blog Regret The Error on October 23. After receiving a faux-press release last week, purportedly from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing a shift in policy to support climate legislation in Congress,...Go to full story

First the New York Daily News used a photograph of trash at the Bronx’s Hunts Point Market to illustrate a Florida woman’s death.  Now an unidentified redhead has become their poster-boy for an article about overweight, psychotic children. The boy in this Getty image stock photo is identified on the Getty website only as “Boy in pool locker room.” Unable to contact the boy himself, a parent, or the photographer, StinkyJournalism can conclude only...Go to full story