Who's a journalist these days?

Do Journalists Belong in the Media?

As if dictates from governments, media owners and advertisers weren't enough. Now journalists face a new enemy - those pesky mobile phone carrying people, with their instant reports and commentaries. Where are journalists going to go?

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...Blood pours from his scalp as he reaches into his hip pocket, just above his trapped legs. Grabbing his handphone, he clicks on the quick-dial button, giving him a direct connection to a blog server. He clicks on "video" and starts pumping live action online.

"This is Nakasuri Hirito, trapped in the train that has just derailed in Amagasaki, Osaka, Japan. There are bodies all over," he says, as he pans over the inside of the wreckage.

Within seconds, JapanTV gets a sms to check out nakasuri.blogspot.com. The picture of the tragedy unfolding shocks them.

"We are receiving news of a train disaster in Amagasaki, Osaka," says the newscaster, as she interrupts the news bulletin. Within minutes, the blurry picture being generated by Nakasuri's 3G video handphone, is broadcasted live. Controls rooms in Atlanta, London and Kuala Lumpur, pick up the newsbreak and buy the broadcast.

Moments later, CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera switch over. The world holds its breath as the unknown Nakasuri Hirito beams the inside story of the battle to stay alive in carriage number 3.

The world has changed...

Former journalist Premesh Chandran says journalists must find ways of working with, instead of competing against, citizens reporting the news through their video/mobile phone cameras and blogs.

MORE here

Lying as psychological warfare

Our own JCOM grad in US Army fatigues, Leon D'Souza, has a frank take on the government's PR ethics here:
Infoganda: The Politics of Make-Believe News.

THE KILLING FIELDS: About Dith Pran

This should help clear up any confusion about the real Dith Pran and the actor who played his part in The Killing Fields. (Thanks, Unca Google!)

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The portrayal of Dith Pran in "The Killing Fields" won an Oscar for fellow Cambodian Haing Ngor, who had also escaped the violence of the Khmer Rouge. But Ngor escaped the genocide in Cambodia only to be shot to death in this country. He was killed on a street in Los Angeles. Now Dith Pran, who's working in New York as a photographer for The New York Times, wants to make sure people never forget the genocide in Cambodia. He has compiled a collection of personal essays by survivors of the killing fields.

-- from http://www.cambodian.com/interview.htm (transcript of an MSNBC-TV interview with the real Dith Pran)

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Dith Pran (born September 27, 1942 ) is a photojournalist best known as a refugee and Cambodian Holocaust survivor and was the subject of the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields. (He was portrayed in the movie by first time actor Haing S. Ngor, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.)

In 1975, Pran and New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg stayed behind in Cambodia to cover the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge forces. Schanberg and other foreign reporters were allowed to leave, but Pran was not permitted to leave the country. When Cambodians were forced to work in forced labor camps, Pran had to endure four years of starvation and torture, before finally escaping to Thailand.

He has been a photojournalist with the New York Times in the United States since 1980. Pran has worked for recognition of the Cambodian Holocaust victims. He received an Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1998 and is founder and president of The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dith_Pran

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Dr. Haing S. Ngor ( March 22, 1940 –February 25, 1996 ) was a Cambodian American physician and actor who is best known for winning a 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the movie The Killing Fields, in which he portrayed journalist and refugee Dith Pran in 1970s Cambodia, under the rule of the Khmer Rouge.

Ngor himself lived through the Cambodian holocaust, and survived by hiding the fact that he was an obstetrician and gynecologist. As an educated person and a professional, he would have been killed under the harsh regime and purges of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. After the collapse of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Ngor worked as a doctor in a refugee camp inside Thailand, and left for the United States on August 30, 1980.

In 1988, he wrote Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey, detailing his life under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In the second edition Survival in the Killing Fields, Roger Warner, Ngor's co-author, adds an epilogue telling the story of Ngor's life after winning the Academy Award.

On February 25, 1996 , Ngor was shot to death outside his apartment in Los Angeles, California, by members of a street gang who demanded the locket around his neck. The locket contained a picture of his late wife; none of the money in his wallet (reportedly a few hundred dollars in cash) was stolen. There was some speculation at the time that the gang members were acting at the behest of Khmer Rouge sympathizers in the U.S., but this was never proven.

Three 19-year-old members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz street gang were arrested and charged with Ngor's murder. They were separately tried and convicted in the Superior Court of Los Angeles. Tak Sun Tan was sentenced to 56 years to life; Indra Lim to 26 years to life; Jason Chan to life without parole. In 2004, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted Tak Sun Tan's habeas corpus petition, finding that prosecutors had manipulated the jury's sympathy by presenting false evidence. This decision was reversed and the conviction was ultimately upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in July 2005 .

Ngor survived incredible dangers during his life in Cambodia only to die violently in his adopted homeland, but he told a New York Times reporter after the release of The Killing Fields, "If I die from now on, OK! This film will go on for a hundred years."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haing_S._Ngor

Mixed Signals

Did you know that NPR has an official blog site?

It's called Mixed Signals.

You Risk & Iraq

Initially I'm inclined to say that reporters don't have the right to ask people to risk anything at all, because Kant would say that is using people as a means to an end.

But on second thought, I don't think that I actually feel that way. I mean, we are only asking someone to take risks. They have the full freedom to refuse. It's only a request, not a demand. I would like to think that any reporter would communicate risks to an individual that they were asking a favor of; that a reporter would not knowingly send someone somewhere without informing that person of the risks. That would be wrong and immoral. Additionally, if someone does not want to take a risk, well... everyone has a price and I'm sure that a reporter could find someone with whom they could work out a reasonable deal.

I think that the most important things are that anyone who is asked to take a risk understands the risks and dangers at hand, and that they have the ability to decline the offer. Provided that those conditions are met, I see nothing wrong with asking an individual to take a risk.

As for the media coverage in the Middle East, I'd give them a C-. They do provide quite accurate information on factual events. When, where, who, and what are usually covered pretty well. If a suicide bomber blows something up, I have complete confidence that the media will tell me all about it with haste. However, I'm quite displeased with the not-so factual facets of the Middle East conflict. That is, how to the people over there feel about us? Sure, we know that at least part of the population hates us, but what about everyone else? Do they all hate us, or are some of them thankful for what we're doing? This war is not only a war of militaries, but of the hearts and minds of people. The media does a fair job on the militaristic facts, but what about the hearts and minds? We've won the war militarily for sure, but how about the war for the people and for their support?

Journalism & Public Relations

Journalists use Public Relations as if it were a tool, yes; but PR also uses the media as if it were a tool as well.

Journalism wants to inform the public. In some instances, their only source is the PR of a company. For journalists, the PR is a well of information; a resource, a gold vein, meant to be tapped. PR is one of the Media's information gathering tools.

However, PR often uses the Media as its own tool. If a company wants the world to know something, then they have a few different options. One would be advertising, or using some form of mass communication. This is usually a little expensive. Another would be the internet. However, when it comes to what everybody pays attention to, the news, not every company has all the resources. That is, not too many companies have their own television channel, broadcasting equipment, studio, etc.... So what's cheaper than buying or creating your own news corporation? Hiring a few PR guys. PR uses the media in place of having their own stuff. PR uses journalism for their cameras, recorders, newspapers, and audience. Journalism is one of a corporation’s tools for distributing information about them selves. Through a PR guy, all a corporation has to do is put the information out there and hope that journalists pick it up.

That's how Journalism and PR are symbiotic. The relationship, however, is a love-hate one. The information that journalists want and the information that PR representatives provide are not always the same. The media often wants the dirt, the scandals, and the bad news. No (good) PR rep is going to provide all the details about a company’s scandals.

Journalism and PR need each other, but they don't always want the same thing. They each use the other as if it's a tool, but unfortunately (from the view of the operator) the tool always seems to have a little resistance.

It's all about the public...

If you look at public relations and journalism there is one thing in common... the public. Both fields are trying to inform the public in some way or another. It just so happens that PR people are informing from their client's perspective while journalists are supposed to be unbiased or "watchdogs" for the public. In truth each could not successfully complete their jobs without one another.
Journalists have to cover so many different beats that sometimes things are passed up. That is where PR people jump in. They help inform journalists when certain events are happening for their companies or organizations. That way if the press wants to attend they can.
The real conflict between PR and journalists comes in how and what the public learns. Journalists want all of the story while PR may want to spin it to the advantage of their client. It just comes down to where a person's loyalties are. PRp people have a loyalty to their clients while journalists have it to the public. Although PR may want to inform the public, they are not the first priority. The loyalty difference creates tension between the two. This tension will probably never disappear but journalists and PR people will always have to work together. They may not want to but they need to to successfully complete their jobs. This need for one another will keep journalists and PR people cooperating while they may hate one another.

News Media vs New Media

There are now an estimated 30 million blogs in the burgeoning blogosphere, and new ones are appearing at the rate of 100,000 new blogs a day.

At the same time, traditional main stream media is losing ground and consolidating.

Alan Saracevic muses on this upheaval in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Can't the media all get along?

It's no secret the media is in the midst of a grand revolution.

As with any major quake, the resulting damage has been severe. In the past weeks, months and years, the tension between what has come to be known as the mainstream media, or MSM, and its digital counterparts has become thick.

Newspapers are suffering and music publishers are litigating. Advertising dollars are floating from place to place, looking for safe harbor. And media consumers are drowning in a sea of information, unsure of what's trustworthy and what's false ... unsure of how to process all the data.

No one said revolutions were pretty.

Selling Ethics?

I would have to say that anybody who would sell their proclaimed ethics isn't really proclaiming the correct ethics for thier character. If somebody's ethics are that situational, then are they really the deep convictions that the ethical philosopher's we have studied have made them out to be? I would say that nobody can really sell their true ethics, or rather ethical foundation. Somebody who is willing to sell what might be termed ethical etiquette in a certain circumstance isn't really selling their ethics at all, because they don't believe enough in them to stand behind them. That's not to say that somebody's ethical standpoint can't change, but I believe that requires a more momentous experience than a simple exchange of money. Events, life, a change in the character of the individual may change thier ethical standpoint, but that doesn't mean they sold it out. If somebody sells "ethics," they aren't really selling much more than situational propriety, not their ethics.

STUDY GUIDE for MIDTERM

For the Media Ethics midterm (March 21), you should know:

– the ethical philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Ross, Royce, Rawls, Gilligan; and the basics of communitarianism as an ethical philosophy
– Kant's Categorical Imperative
– difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism
– what the Potter Box is and how to use it
– what cognitive dissonance is and how it’s used in advertising and public relations
– all the ethical values of journalism
– Sissela Bok’s principles for ethical decision-making
– the difference between law and ethics, and between ethics and morals
– how to make an ethical justification of a decision you make
– what journalism’s responsibility is to society
– what the major problems with Royce’s definition of loyalty are
– the history of thinking about truth, from Plato to the present
– what credibility is
– what the SPJ code of ethics says about journalism’s duties
– ethical problems with advertising
– what the TARES test is
– the balance and cognitive dissonance theories of persuasion
– advertising’s ethical problems with regard to vulnerable audiences
– how public relations professionals help journalists function
– why there is tension between PR and journalism
– what advocacy is and how it can be used as an ethical justification for public relations
– what constitutes a justifiable lie (and how to justify it ethically)

Be able to answer the questions in boldface at the beginning of the chapters 1-5 of Patterson and Wilkins, and be prepared to work out ethical justifications for problems raised by the three films we’ve viewed thus far.

Ethics & The Black Market

Are my ethics for sale? Yup. I'll come right out and say that I'm sure there's a price. Though I'm not exactly sure where it is. My price would have to depend on my situation. For example, right now, I'm getting pretty dang sick of Raman noodles. I don't have a lot of dough to spare, so Raman it is! But aside from that, I'm not hurtin' financially too badly. So right now my ethics are pretty expensive. But if for some reason I found myself in a cardboard box on the corner of some street in New York City, then the price of my ethics would drop considerably.

Even in the cardboard box scenario, I would like to PRETEND that they'd still be reasonably expensive. However, if I had a family to support, and I was desperate for money or other support for them, then my ethics would become quite reasonably priced.

If I'm single, then my integrity means a lot to me. But if I were to have a family in need of support, I'll sacrifice my integrity quite early in the game.

As for which ethics I would compromise.... that's actually a lot harder to answer than whether or not I would compromise any. I think that pretty much any of them would equally dent my sense of integrity and self-respect.

The price would, however, depend on the extent of the ethics violation. For example, am I lying to just some random dude that asks me about "Big Joe", or am I lying to the Judge about "Big Joe"? Am I walking into an unlocked house to steal the $10 that someone knows their friend keeps under their pillow, or robbing a convenience store at gunpoint for a lot more money....and some skittles? The seriousness of the ethics-violation would determine the price.

But that's how selling my ethics would go. Anyone care to make any bids?

MySpace: The Story of the Month

from Kelly McBride's Everyday Ethics blog:

MySpace is all over the news. It's dangerous. It's mysterious. It's menacing. It's a source of teenage hijinks, bad judgment, and even criminal behavior.

Yet it's here to stay. Like the school cafeteria, the bus stop, the mall and after school at the home of working parents, it's one more place where children and teens go to experiment with their identity and their world, away from the prying eyes of parents.

In the last month most MySpace stories come in three categories: Advice for hapless parents, criminal behavior and danger. Former Poynter Naughton Fellow Matt Thompson (now a deputy editor for interactive media at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis) was doing a radio interview on the MySpace phenomenon last week. No sooner had he finished than he found a story about the 16-year-old Colorado kid arrested after posting photos of guns.

Matt was the one who pointed out to me that current narrative is one of fear. A Canadian blogger, the Fine Young Journalist, has documented the coverage. Matt passed along the name Danah Boyd, youth culture researcher with some real information and observations.

A few of the recent MySpace stories have a more thoughtful approach. Steve Israel of The Times Herald-Record in New York wrote this story. We spent a long time talking about what makes MySpace different than hiding in the basement with your friends, sneaking cigarettes and finding your dad's old Playboy Magazines.

Are there other stories about MySpace that go beyond alarmism and fear?

Does this hook in with what Michael Moore said in Bowling for Columbine about America's culture of fear? What do YOU think?