Fairness, balance, objectivity, truth, bias…  These words get used a lot in discussions of journalistic ethics. But not every journalist (or every ethicist) agrees either on their exact definitions, or on how they fit in to the greater project of journalism.  Most would agree that bias isn’t good. But David Poulson, associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism argues the opposite in a March 6 post at Great...Go to full story

The embattled Kansas reporter Claire O’Brien--who refused to reveal a confidential source and story notes from her jailhouse interview to Ford County Attorney--now faces a new challenge. The Associated Press reported on March 9 that O’Brien has been fired from the Dodge City Daily Globe. O’Brien did not appear at the inquisition hearing at which she was ordered to testify in Feb 12. But after her source stepped forward on his own and...Go to full story

Just as in print stories, images and videos that are broadcast on television are subject to editing. And, just as manipulating a quote in a print story to make it appear more exciting can deceive readers, televised images, audio or video that are edited to stage a better story can mislead viewers. Gawker reports commenters at "YouTube and various message boards" caught ABC News fabricating a fake "real live- action demonstration" video last...Go to full story

In the aftermath of Zachary Kouwe’s plagiarism and departure from the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, the Times' reader’s editor has published a column revealing some more details of what happened. Included is a description of how some of Kouwe’s early cribbing from a blog called DealBreaker was found out; the site set a plagiarism trap. According to Hoyt, DealBreaker published an internal Citigroup memo but changed a few words to try to trap anyone stealing the...Go to full story

This week, the Columbia Journalism Review published the results of their survey of editorial practices at magazine Web sites (Web sites associated with a print magazine). The news was somewhat troubling in CJR's eyes, revealing that online work often gets much less fact-checking or copy editing than print. But New York Magazine argues that study results shouldn’t necessarily be as “depressing” as CJR makes out. (StinkyJournalism wonders if New York Magazine...Go to full story

“What’s the difference between aggregation and creating journalism?” Robert Niles asks in a March 2 post at the Online Journalism Review. His essay, an edited transcript of remarks made at the WAN-IFRA Future of News Media and Journalism Conference in Singapore, argues that journalism needs to negotiate the space between old models of ethics and new models of financial efficiency. Niles, a journalist, who worked as an Internet editor for top newspapers, the...Go to full story

In 2008, when a fake newspaper front page made a splash with commuters in New York City, the spoof turned out to be the handiwork of political pranksters wanting to propagate their message about ending the Iraq war. The New York Times, the victim of the hoax, reported, "The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were...Go to full story

This week saw studies from the Pew Research Center and the Society for New Communications Research documenting how the landscapes of both news-consumption by audiences and news-gathering by journalists are dramatically changing.

As StinkyJournalism has written before, some of the new forms emerging--like partnerships between mainstream media and non-profit or other reporting operations--raise questions about how to maintain important ethical...Go to full story

Last week StinkyJournalism critiqued Nature magazine for publishing a book review by geographer and popular science writer Jared Diamond that lacked an important disclosure of conflict of interest.

We argued that Diamond reviewed the book Questioning Collapse without making it clear enough to readers that the book directly and specifically critiques his own work. (For the details, check out our discussion in full here.) We contacted Nature for a response, and...Go to full story

After a two-month run, the Miami Herald has reported that their program allowing readers to donate money for online content had been discontinued. StinkyJournalism wrote about the donation links at the end of online stories before. Now, after two months, the option for voluntary payment had been dropped, the Herald business section reports. Elissa Vanaver, a company vice president and assistant to the publisher, tells the Herald, "After evaluating two months of response,...Go to full story