For my newsletter, Crisis Manager, I’m developing a major article about Journalistic Ethics (please, no comments about oxymorons, two of my prior careers were as a journalist and as a member of military intelligence), I’m looking for generic, not specific examples of ethics violations. In other words, I don’t need names named, I need the behavior described. Here are some examples:
- Publishing allegations by a single source without attempting to verify accuracy.
- Omitting facts provided to the journalist that would clearly lead the reader/viewer to a different conclusion.
- Calling for comment after normal business hours when there would have been time for the journalist to call earlier.
- Calling for a comment 30 minutes or less before deadline.
- Using editorial positioning of quotes to impact readers’ conclusions — e.g., putting quotes critical of an organization in the lead paragraphs, burying any response much further down in copy.
If you have more examples, please submit them as comments to this blog post or email them to me, and thanks! If you want to be quoted in the story (no guarantees of course), then please say so and give me whatever standard journalistic credit line you wish to be used.
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Jonathan Bernstein
Founder & Chairman
Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc.