News reporting faces web challenge, warns NYT editor : CyberJournalist.net

News reporting faces web challenge, warns NYT editor : CyberJournalist.net

Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, warned last week that reliable news reporting is dwindling, speaking at the Hugo Young memorial lecture in London. Keller said bloggers, internet search engines and satirical talk shows had blossomed across the world but could never replace reporting.

Journalism Matters, summary of outcomes

Here's Simon Collins, NZ Herald social affairs reporter and EPMU delegate's summary of the Journalism Matters conference held over the weekend 11-12 August in Wellington.

About 115 people attended the media summit organised by the journalists' scetion of the EPMU at Parliament over the weekend, including journalists from all sections of the media. There has been nothing like it in my 31 years as a journalist.

Outcomes were (summarised):
1. The EPMU will lead a review of journalism in NZ over the next 6 months, inviting public submissions on the effects of growing commercial pressures on journalism, journalists'pay rates and the resulting loss of talent to PR, freelance pay rates, union membership, public interest broadcasting and the growing pressure on journalists to serve multiple media at once.
2. The EPMU will also review the Journalists' Code of Ethics, available as Rule 42 of the EPMU rules at:
http://www.epmu.org.nz/SITE_Default/about/rules/default.asp
Public submissions will, be sought for this review too. The code needs to be updated to take account of new technology.
3. We want taxpayer funding of TVNZ to be increased to a level that allows it to be a true public service broadcaster.
4. We urge everyone concerned about democratic media to take every opportunity to create new media outlets committed to providing people with information about public issues in a coherent form, facilitating an exchange of ideas about those issues and building a sense of social cohesion as a foundation for social action.
5. We support the work of the Bruce Jesson Foundation and urge other funders to fund independent investigative journalism on important public issues.
6. We will establish a Movement for Democratic Media, with membership open to all NZers as well as the union, to create, support and link local websites and other media outlets reporting on public issues, and to campaign for publicly funded broadcasting. We hope to organise a planning meeting to establish an Auckland branch of the movement in the near future. If you're keen to be involved, please let me know.

Simon

I was interviewed by 95bFM on Sunday morning about the conference, you can hear the audio here.

David Robie, my colleague at AUT, has also blogged on this at the Pacific Media Centre website. You can also read and hear more at Scoop
David's blog on the conference is at Cafe Pacific

Blacksburg Massacre - the techno-legal time gap and new media

In an interesting article by Joe Garofoli at SFGate we are beginning to see a discussion about the many ethical and lego-technical dilemmas thrown up by the way that NBC chose to use the Cho Seung-Hui suicide video.
The basic question is should the news media use everything it can get - such as the "eyewitness" cameraphone footage and the Cho tape, just because it can? There are also issues of verification, authority and authenticity around this. Not to mention the traditional ethical issues, such as grief intrusion, the coverage of violent crimes and suicide and the rights of victims.
I have written (see link to my books below) about what I call the ethico-legal paradox (that there is a contradiction sometimes between the law and ethics in media decision-making) and the techno-legal time gap (that there is a disconnect between what the technology can be used for and any form of legitimate regulatory regime to govern its use).
We see both of these issues being played out in the raging debate about the use of the Cho video in NBC (and other) newscasts and on the web.
Garofoli wrote that in the Blacksburg situation we see the visible interdependence between old and new media for the first time. Well not quite. I have written and lectured on this over the past year to my colleagues and students. I call this phenomenon "Journalism in the Age of YouTube".
It first came to my notice in July 2005 during the London bombings. The BBC and other media were running loads of amateur footage shot on cameraphones and many stills of the underground explosions. But the real tragedy of this was the shooting of Brazilian tourist, Jean Charles de Menezes by the police a couple of days later. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that they had seen "wires" poking out of his jacket when police tackled him to the ground and shot him between five and seven times in the head. The news that Mr de Menezes was a "terrorist" led the frontpage news the next day. It took the British police more than 24 hours to correct the wrong information from eyewitnesses. This is the real danger in this unmediated and uncorroborated fast-media world.
The second time I noticed this, and what sparked my interest even more was inNovember 2006 when a student at UC-Berkeley was tazered by over-zealous security guards. With in hours footage shot by eyewitness cameraphone was posted on YouTube and within 48 hours it was a big international story. I saw it for the first time on a commercial network bulletin in Perth, Australia.
What was interesting about this event was that it set up a referential feedback loop between YouTube and the mass media. YouTube hosted the phone footage, then it was picked up by the campus student press, then by local (San Francisco) news organisations, then it made it onto CNN and Fox and went global. But almost immediately, YouTubers were cross-posting the Fox and CNN clips back into their networks. When I last checked on 21 April 2007 there had been over one million hits on one version of the phone video, but there are several others that have similar hit rates.
I agree that there is a growing interconnection between traditional media and the digital natives, such as YouTubers. My interest in pursuing this is to know how far it's going and where it might lead.
I am currently writing a book about this and would love to hear from EM readers about their own experiences, thoughts and incidents. If you come across more writing on this, pls let me know about it.
Here's another thoughtful news report that really nails some of the ethical issues. The AP television writer, David Bauder, had this to say, and it's a comment I agree with:

The pictures alone _ 11 showed a gun pointed at a camera lens _ were repulsive. Many who saw them viewed it as a second attack, an invitation to copycats and a fulfillment of Cho's demented wish for attention.

There's also some good coverage over at the UK Press Gazette blog.
Meanwhile, this is what the good burgher's of Blacksburg have had to put up with. Would you like to have dinner with this sh!t blaring away from the widescreen TV over the bar?

Media in crisis - New Zealand journalists angry

The New Zealand journalists' union issued the following media release, more on this story later.

Tuesday, 17 April 2007, 1:21 pm
Press Release: Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union April 17, 2007

Media in crisis, say NZ journalists

Journalists from news organisations across the country have condemned proposals to cut editorial staff at TVNZ and APN at an industry meeting in Wellington.

The meeting also called for a major summit this year to address the growing crisis in the New Zealand media.

The resolution was passed unanimously by representatives of more than 5000 print and media workers at the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union's Print & Media Industry Council, which has been meeting yesterday and today to discuss the union's strategy to fight the cuts.

Simon Collins, an EPMU delegate at the New Zealand Herald, says journalists are alarmed at the growing crisis in the New Zealand media.

"New Zealand journalists are alarmed at the decline in quality reporting that's being driven by commercial pressures.
–
– "We see the proposed cuts at TVNZ and APN as a fundamental attack on news quality that will lead to less in-depth coverage, less accuracy, and more important stories left untold."

Collins says good journalism is crucial to the functioning of our democracy.

"As journalists we feel a responsibility to speak out in the interests of the New Zealand public and demand media companies invest in good journalism so we can fulfil our proper democratic function."

The EPMU-sponsored summit will be open to anybody with an interest in the media and will include international speakers, news professionals and academics, and community leaders.

ENDS

Resolution of the Print & Media Industry Council, 16-17 April 2007

That this council condemns the decline in journalistic standards that has resulted from the over-commercialisation of New Zealand's media.

The council endorses measures to halt the decline in truth and quality reporting in print and electronic media.

We demand appropriate staffing levels, training and promotion of professional standards and ethics.

We condemn and express alarm at the likely loss of freedom of expression, quality journalism, and range of voices that will result from proposed cuts to TVNZ and APN newspapers.

We reaffirm our journalistic commitment to providing news and information to serve all citizens and our democracy regardless of commercial pressures.

CARRIED

welcome to this blog

This is my blog, I suppose all of you Cool Hand Lukes out there knew exactly what was going to go into your first post. I've got no idea.
This is a blog about journalism and ethics, it might also be about other things. Time will tell.

I recently arrived in Auckland, the commercial and media capital of New Zealand to take up a new job as Curriculum Leader, Journalism in the School of Communication Studies at AUT. By reputation it's one of the best and biggest j-schools in the country and a challenge for me to lift the game - from being an Institute of Technology to being a university.

I'm also interested in media ethics. I've written a book with my colleague Roger Patching on journalism ethics and it's just about to be released in a second edition.

I'm currently working on some case studies featuring New Zealand media ethics. I'm interested in hearing from people who have a story to tell.