Journalism: 2018-2019 (Semester 1)

Mitchell Autorino Bad Journalism example Marshall Shepard posted an article about how weather men are affecting journalism and how they are constantly getting the weather wrong. While I see his point, and how getting the weather wrong could potential hurt business's, they are doing the best to get the weather right. Therefore, I think this was a bad example of journalism, because they get it right a lot of the time, and when they don't it is not really there fault. 

In May of 2018 the media, including New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and The Associated Press, all put out stories saying that President Trump called illegal immigrants “animals”. This was taken completely out of context and used in these articles to make the President look bad. Who Trump was calling animals was not illegal immigrants but rather MS-13 gang member(MS-13 is a vicious and violent street gang responsible for murders and rapes). The reason Trump said this is because, “the president made his comments immediately after Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims expressed frustration with regulations which prohibit her from alerting ICE to the location of MS-13 gang members ”(Student News Daily). The ethical dilemma behind this is the fact that journalist have to responsibility of reporting real news and not editing any quotes or take them out of context. This dilemma could have been avoided if biased journalist did not quickly jump onto a quote were Trump called any gro...

Celebrity tabloid magazines often report false claims of celebrities being pregnant, getting divorced, or even getting arrested.  In 2011, "The Star" magazine posted an article that claimed actress Katie Holmes was a drug addict.  It described her struggle with addiction and gave details about the drugs she allegedly did.  Katie Holmes filed a law suit against The Star and they settled for 50 million dollars.  The magazine issued an apology and even said they would contribute "a substantial donation" to a non profit organization of Holmes choice.  This issue could have been easily avoided for this magazine company if they had not written an article without facts or evidence.  Such a serious accusation must have proof to back it up with, and this article did not have any.  Gossip magazines have to be careful that the rumors they write about have some truth to them or else celebrities will sue for defamation.  - Sloan

Adnan Hajj was a freelance photographer working on the 2006 Lebanon War, a conflict between the state of Isreal and belligerents in Lebanon. Hajj had been working with Reuters for a number of years, and was taking photographs for their coverage of the conflict. Later, after some of the photos were displayed on Reuters, in conjunction with their reporting, it was revealed that the photos were the subject of heavy manipulation from a photo-manipulation software. The manipulation included the apparent use of Adobe Photoshop's Clone tool to make damage caused by Isreal appear worse than it actually was, and taking a photo of an Israeli plane dropping a flare and cloned it to make it appear as three flares, then misrepresented them as missiles being dropped over Lebanon. The images were retracted and Reuters terminated Hajj from their staff.   (Photo from NBC, the left photo is the doctored one, the right photo is not) The obvious unethical act wa...

T he Detroit Free Press announced that it is launching an investigation into sports columnist Mitch Albom's work because one of his columns, filed April 1, reported events that didn't happen. Albom described two NBA players in the stands of an April 2 NCAA basketball game, even though the players had told him they would be at the game, never showed. The Free Press' investigation found no evidence of similar deceptions but did uncover several instances when Albom did not attribute quotes taken from other news organizations and times when Albom slightly altered those quotes which lead to Albom being investigated. On April 23, the paper announced that Albom and four others would be disciplined but did not specify their punishments. These events could have been easily avoided if Albom, a journalist, should know his job involved telling the truth and giving all the facts.  The Detroit Free press did a great job in handling the whole situation and released everything going on to ...

In the late 90's Stephen Glass wrote many successful articles for news companies including  The New Republic and  Rolling Stone. In 1998 it was revealed that Glass's published articles had been completely fabricated to the point that some were based on fictional events. He made up quotations and sources in his articles. Besides the fact that Glass lied in his work as a journalist, he also included many negative stereotypes about ethnic and political groups. Glass has since been fired from The New Republic and has become infamous for his misconduct in journalism. Now Glass has been barred from receiving his license to practice law because of his apparent unappreciation of the truth. The news outlet could have fact-checked Glass's work more carefully before allowing his articles to be published. Glass's journalism fabrications were unethical because he presented lies as the truth and was completely knowledgeable about what he was doing.

In late 2014, Australian news outlets faced a huge scandal which could have easily been avoided. Abu Bakar Alam, who was at the time 19, had his picture printed on the front of Fairfax newspapers because he was incorrectly identified as a true terrorist, Numan Haider, who stabbed two police officers before he was shot. His picture was posted all over major Australian newspapers and on the internet. The Age - an Australian newspaper - found the photo of him on Facebook, even though Alam did not have a Facebook account. The Age did apologize and made an out-of-court settlement with Alam. This mishap could have easily been avoided if the news outlets had fact-checked and found the original source of the picture used. If they had put more effort into finding the original picture, they might have known it wasn't the terrorist.

Publishing Drunk Drivers’ Photos When readers of  The Anderson News  picked up the Dec. 31, 1997, issue of the newspaper, stripped across the top of the front page was a New Year’s greeting and a warning. “HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR,” the banner read. “But please don’t drink and drive and risk having your picture published.” Readers were referred to the editorial page where White explained that starting in January 1998 the newspaper would publish photographs of all persons convicted of drunken driving in Anderson County. Source- (https://www.spj.org/ecs10.asp) What is wrong with this article is the fact that it is going beyond the truth. It may be with good intentions of helping out the town, but they are exposing photos of everybody who gets a DUI. This is an invasion of privacy and could be easily avoided. You can write about the DUI, maybe even use the name of the person if they give consent, but not likely, but you can never put their photo into the news because it can rui...