Coverage of Lipsyte’s keynote address and other panel discussions and breakout sessions from the conference can be found here.
The keynote speaker for our upcoming conference, Robert Lipsyte, has had a career that most could only dream of. He’s seen success in various fields throughout his storied career, and is an excellent example for aspiring writers.
Working as both a journalist and as a novelist, Lipsyte’s first experience came as a copyboy in the sports department of the New York Times, and even though he hated his job, he fell in love with the paper.
He eventually worked his way up to cover the spring training for the Mets in 1962, and was given the opportunity to cover the heavyweight championship fight between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay in 1964.
Lipsyte would go on to become the new boxing reporter for the paper, and wrote for the publication until 1971, when he left to write novels and movies. He wrote his first young adult novel , “The Contender,” while still a reporter at the Times.
Over the course of his career as an author, Lipsyte has authored 12 young adult novels, seven books for adults and seven young adult non-fiction books. He has won numerous awards that add prestige to an already illustrious career.
Recently, Lipsyte has served as the ombudsman for ESPN. His additional media credits include CBS Sunday Morning, NBC Nightly News and PBS.
Lipsyte turned a fascination with a newsroom in 1960’s New York into one of the most successful and storied careers of our time.
We at the Center of Journalism Ethics are honored to host Mr. Lipsyte at the University of Wisconsin, and look forward to his keynote address on April 10th.
The USA Today Sports Media Group and the IndyCar Series have entered into a deal that appears to combine news coverage and advertising that some observer find ethically disconcerting, according to a report in the Indianapolis Business Journal.
The agreement, initiated by USA Today, promises to bring more attention to open wheel racing, and will provide USA Today journalists with enhanced access to
Writing for IBJ, Anthony Schoettle reports that the agreement, initiated by USA Today, promises to bring more attention to open wheel racing, and will provide USA Today journalists with enhanced access.
As part of the deal announced Feb. 26, USA Today, owned by Indianapolis Star parent Virginia-based Gannett Co. Inc., has agreed to write pre- and post-race stories for every IndyCar race and produce special sections around the sport and its drivers. The news organization also agreed to expand its coverage of IndyCar on USAToday.com. In return, IndyCar promised to give USA Today reporters preferred access to series officials, team owners and drivers, and track owners.
IndyCar also promised to give USA Today advertising sales representatives access to its series and team sponsors. USA Today, IndyCar officials said, will be invited to a number of “sponsor summits” and other networking events.
While marketers associated with IndyCar are excited about the potential boost in awareness and attention to the sport, Schoettle notes that the deal raises concerns among some media ethicists, including the risk of bias in coverage, a chilling effect on the coverage efforts by other news organizations, and the blurring of advertising and editorial content.
“When you make a deal that ties coverage to advertising and marketing in a way that can erode journalistic independence, you have a serious ethical issue,” [Bob] Steele said. “Readers must be confident that all news reporting is driven by journalistic principles and ethical standards and not by business values. This relationship certainly raises at the minimum a yellow flag and perhaps some serious red flags.” [Steele is the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida.]
Content agreements such as the one with IndyCar are not new for USA Today. The organization has in place similar deals with both NASCAR and the PGA.
Marketing and media arrangements such at the USA Today/IndyCar deal are among the types of ethical issues in sports journalism that will be discussed at the UW-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics seventh annual conference, Fair or Foul: Ethics and Sports Journalism on April 10. Additional details and recitation information for the conference, which is open to the public, can be found here.
How does a society deal with what it considers to be unethical use of the freedom to publish?
Dictators imprison journalists. Democracies use a mix of legal and non-legal mechanisms, from libel laws to press councils.
In the United States, journalists have long countered calls for greater legal regulation by appealing to an ethical ideal — the “self-regulation” of the press.
The idea, on the face of it, is simple. Like other professions, journalists would follow and enforce their own norms of conduct, rather than place it in the hands of government agencies.
For those who hope that self-regulation is still a valid idea, I have bad news from the expanding frontiers of today’s digital journalism.
Self-regulation is no longer a clear and coherent ethical ideal. The problem is not the old objection that self-regulation struggles in practice. Yes, too many news outlets ignore ethical standards with little consequence.
The problem is deeper. The very idea of self-regulation by professional journalists no longer makes sense in an era of digital, global media. At best, self-regulation applies only to the diminishing domain of mainstream professional journalists.
As a free press supporter, I worry about this decline in the ideal.
It leaves room for demagogues to argue that, if self-regulation is a myth, the only alternative is greater legal and social regulation of the news media.
Therefore, I propose that we get to work to construct a new idea for supporting standards. We need a society-wide notion of media responsibility. Moreover, we need new public structures that allow society as a whole to discuss, monitor and criticize the ethics of journalism practice.
I call for the creation of what I call the National Coalition for Media Standards.
The coalition would be a new way of “doing” journalism ethics in the public sphere, adjusted to new media. It would include the public as an important part of the ethics process.
Let me explain, starting with why self-regulation is an idea collapsing from within.
Why self-regulation?
Journalism self-regulation and ethics were born together, as ethical twins, in the early 1900s, as journalists created professional associations with codes of ethics. For the first time, journalists espoused a collective responsibility for the practice and sought common standards.
Journalists made a group commitment to serve the public good. They articulated that responsibility in terms of the now familiar principles of truth-telling, objectivity, separation of news and opinion, and editorial independence.
They also talked about their professionalism and their codes of ethics as sufficient to regulate their conduct. Who watches the watchdog? The watchdog itself.
It is no accident that professional ethics and self-regulation were linked so closely.
Both developments were a response to a rising public worry about the power of the new mass commercial press. Like today, the public accused journalists of being sensational, inaccurate and biased, and advancing their own interests first.
This public decline in confidence, combined with wartime calls for censorship, prompted governments of the era to threaten legal restrictions on professional media practitioners, including film producers and advertisers.
Self-regulation was journalism’s rhetorical response to threats against its freedom and lagging public support. In practice, the idea proved to be imperfect. Many news outlets ignored codes of ethics or rejected group mechanisms such as press councils. Public confidence declined as media scandals mounted and the influence of power and business on media grew.
Self-regulation’s fatal blow
The idea of self-regulation entails the following three conditions: (1) an ability to clearly recognize who is a journalist, i.e., who is a member of the profession; (2) a willingness among group members to self-regulate; (3) and substantial agreement on principles for critiquing conduct.
By the turn of this century, the technology-driven media revolution, with its democratization of media, began to undermine all three conditions.
First, the revolution created many forms of nonprofessional, nonmainstream journalism, muddying the water as to who is a journalist. Self-regulation was meant to apply only to mainstream professional journalists. But does self-regulation apply to nonprofessionals? To whom does the ideal apply?
Second, presume that we can find a way to define “journalist” to include most professional and nonprofessional practitioners. Would sufficient numbers of this amorphous group be willing to come together to practice self-regulation? Is the idea of “collective responsibility” viable in today’s chaotic media universe?
Third, we lack widespread agreement on the norms that would guide self-regulation across multiple media platforms. What code should be adopted? Almost every principle of professional self-regulation, from objectivity to impartiality, is in question.
Meanwhile, glaring failures of self-regulation, such as the phone hacking scandal in Britain, undermine the legitimacy of self-regulation. People who contend that the media can self-regulate are laughed out of the court of public opinion.
So we face two large questions for self-regulation: The self-regulation of whom – which journalists? And the self-regulation of what – what norms?
Society-wide responsibility
I suggest we start by formulating a new idea to replace self-regulation.
First, we eliminate the term “regulation.” The term is misleading because it suggests that we have legal mechanisms in mind. Second, we eliminate the “self” in “self-regulation” which refers to professional journalists and replace it with a process that includes citizens.
Self-regulation in journalism has been a closed, inward-looking approach to ethics. It presumes that ethics belongs to journalists. They create the codes; they enforce them.
But the responsibility for good journalism is a collective responsibility of all of society. Citizens, social groups and citizen journalists should be an intrinsic part of the nationwide process for supporting media standards.
Journalism ethics starts with asking what sorts of media our democracy needs. When it comes to this question, we all have a deep interest.
A national coalition
So the question becomes: How do we create an open process? What public institutions might realize this ideal?
I propose that movers and shakers in the media world form a National Coalition for Media Standards. The coalition would unite journalists and nonjournalists in analyzing and supporting standards across all forms of journalism.
I see the coalition as the hub of a wheel where the spokes link to media agencies, societies and individuals that care about democratic media. It would not replace existing agencies. It would be a “meta” organization that coordinates activity and partners with groups.
The coalition would have an office at a center for ethics, say at a university. It would be funded by major foundations, partners, journalism associations and philanthropic individuals.
The coalition would be led by a director and a large board. Forty percent of the board would be journalists from all forms of media; 15 percent would be people who study and teach journalism and its ethics; 20 percent would come from groups that are substantially affected by media coverage, e.g. minority groups; 10 percent would be people with experience in press regulation, e.g., ombudsmen, standards editors; and 15 percent would be citizens from various walks of life.
What would be the main activities of the coalition?
First, study the health of the media system at large and trends in media ethics, culminating in annual high-profile reports on the state of media ethics.
Second, investigate and publicly comment on individual cases of bad practice. Support standards by widespread public discussion and criticism. Praise and support good journalism.
Third, assist in reconstructing ethics for digital news media. Among the first projects would be addressing the questions raised above – who is a journalist and what common standards might unite journalists across platforms?
Fourth, take on a public education mission. Convene workshops and conferences, publish guidelines and teaching modules, and engage the public in addressing issues.
All of us can think of obstacles to the creation of this coalition, or a similar agency. I am acutely aware of these lurking complexities. Yet we have to start fundamental reform of journalism ethics from somewhere.
What is important is that people who care about responsible journalism imagine – and then create – a new way to deal with the difficult and new ethical issues of communication in a media-lined world.
Self-regulation within a profession is dead. Long live society-wide engagement.
Stephen J. A. Ward is an internationally recognized media ethicist, author and educator. He is Distinguished Lecturer of Ethics at the University of British Columbia, Courtesy Professor at the University of Oregon, and founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
[Image credit: Cartoon by William Barritt, first published in “Vim”, v. 1, no. 2, 29 June 1898. Via Library of Congress website; public domain]
The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has named five finalists for the 2015 Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics.
Fox 31 Denver for the decisions it made about including specific cases in reporting on Medicaid “super utilizers.”
The Chicago Tribune for its sensitivity toward sources while reporting on the harsh treatment of juveniles held in detention.
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review for pursuit of an apparent cover-up of the killing of civilians by an American in Iraq.
Pro Publica for placing raw Medicare data in context in its “Treatment Trackers” project.
The Tulsa World for its aggressive, yet sensitive, coverage of a botched execution by the state of Oklahoma.
“While the world often focuses on journalistic sins, we were impressed with the thought and care these organizations gave to serving the public interest responsibly,” says Jack Mitchell, chair of the Shadid Award selection committee and professor emeritus at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The award honors journalists whose reporting on a specific story or series best exemplifies four key criteria: accountability, independence, commitment to finding truth and minimizing harm. The winner will receive a $1,000 prize and a trip to Madison, where the award will be bestowed at the Center for Journalism Ethics annual conference.
The award is the namesake of journalist Anthony Shadid, a graduate of the UW-Madison, who died in 2012 while crossing the Syrian border on a reporting assignment for the New York Times. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his courageous and insightful foreign correspondence. Shadid sat on the ethics center’s advisory board and strongly supported its efforts to promote public interest journalism and stimulate discussion about journalism ethics.
“The award reflects the standards Anthony espoused and made central to his work,” says Robert Drechsel, James E. Burgess chair in journalism ethics and the center’s director. “The contest offers an opportunity to model and honor the best in journalistic practice at a time when journalists often find themselves under withering criticism.”
Last year’s award winner was the Associated Press and staffers Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo and Ted Bridis for their handling of the story of the disappearance of an American businessman/CIA employee in Iran.
The Center for Journalism Ethics conference this year will address ethics and sports journalism. The keynoter will be Robert Lipsyte, veteran sports journalist, author and recent ombudsman for ESPN. The program will include panels on money and sports journalism, privacy, investigating sports, the representation of minorities in sports journalism, and the bounds of civil discourse. The conference takes place in Madison on April 10. Registration information can be found at ethics.journalism.wisc.edu.
The publication of footage depicting police using pepper spray on students at a campus protest originally landed a Western Illinois University student in hot water with the university’s administration recently, according to attorneys representing the student.
The administration’s charges against the student, Nicholas Stewart, who was suspended on the grounds of being a threat to normal university operations, were dropped this past month.
Stewart characterized his reporting as necessary and fair, although it placed the university in bad light. He called the dispute both insanity and without precedent.
“We never had an issue with this before,” Stewart said. “Yes, we’d get an email here or there upset with us about reporting on an event, but never to the degree that Western took at the end of January.”
The university argued that Stewart’s status as Editor-in-Chief at The Western Courier, the school’s newspaper, put him under their jurisdiction and supervision.
However, in a letter from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), President Dana Neuts argued that since the incident occurred during a period when The Western Courier was not even printing, Stewart was operating as a freelance journalist in his coverage.
“The First Amendment gives him the right to record a news event with his own equipment and post it or sell it as a freelance journalist,” Neuts wrote. “The university’s policies are unclear regarding freelance work, so Stewart should be given the benefit of the doubt.”
“All Mr. Stewart did in this case was act as a freelance journalist. His right to do so was fully protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” attorney Gabriel Fuentes said in a press release.
On Feb. 2 following the legal dispute, Western Illinois University reinstated Stewart, waiving the original suspension.
“We have a duty to report what is happening, and we have to inform people what is going on,” Stewart said. “After being reinstated, this whole battle hasn’t affected my feeling toward my original policy. I think now, after the outpouring of support I received, I doubt Western would make reckless decisions like suspending me again in the future.”
Stewart stressed that the role of administration regarding the school newspaper should purely be that of a monitor, not intervening in terms of censorship.
“They should have no say in suspending the staff for our reporting and our opinions. As it is, they have no say in the hiring or firing process,” Stewart said.
In a recent Education Week commentary, however, Frank LoMonte argues that the law falls in favor of the school, not the student journalist, in many instances.
“When schools are challenged over the misuse of censorship authority, they invariably fall back on the same tired rationalization: The law allows it,” LoMonte wrote.
Citing the 1988 Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier ruling as justification, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a school-subsidized outlet’s freedom of the press can be curtailed and limited by the institution, schools do have some power, but often overextend their legal reach, according to LoMonte.
“Schools hold students and teachers to a standard of optimal behavior, not minimally legally compliant behavior,” LoMonte wrote.
The SPJ condemned this standard two years ago, claiming that this practice “impedes … [a student journalist’s instruction] including the right to question authority and investigate performances of governance.”
Stewart, however, is optimistic regarding future disputes in which student journalists and administrations square off.
“I’m glad my case set a precedent not only to Western, but also to other university administrations that might attempt to silence the news by going after the newspaper staff,” Stewart said.
Calls seeking comment from the Western Illinois University officials were not returned.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, I and other journalists in Western democracies deplored the violence and defended freedom of expression against terrorism.
A common defense of the satirical magazine’s barbed cartoons was “the right to offend.” Some commentators made the principle absolute, and then concluded the following: If news media did not republish offending material, their editors were moral cowards.
Legally, this response has its heart in the right place. But, ethically, it comes up short in three places:
THE ‘RIGHT TO OFFEND’
First, the issue is inadequately framed as mainly a legal question of the right to offend, and the main complaint is that the cartoons offend a religious group.
For example, reports of a “Nous Sommes Tous Charlie” symposium at the Missouri School of Journalism focused on the legal aspect of free speech, and what constitutes hate speech.
Such discussions are important, but the Hebdo case is much more than that. It is a question of ethics, journalistic duties, tensions within plural societies and the role of media.
DEFENDING WITHOUT ABSOLUTES
Second, the right to publish is not absolute. Such a view trivializes legitimate questions about using media to offend deeply held beliefs and to create hostile environments. We can defend offensive speech without absolutes or trivialization.
Photo by Valentina Calà, and reused here with Creative Commons license.
We need to reframe the debate to avoid absolutes and to discuss the social duties of journalists — not just their rights. Overall, the Hebdo debate failed to discuss sufficiently the role of news media in amplifying or reducing the tensions between immigrants, Muslims and other groups in France and the rest of Europe.
We need to reframe the debate to avoid absolutes and to discuss the social duties of journalists — not just their rights. Overall, the Hebdo debate failed to discuss sufficiently the role of news media in amplifying or reducing the tensions between immigrants, Muslims and other groups in France and the rest of Europe.
These tensions, enhanced by global media, form the background for the issue of offensive journalism today. We should ask: What sorts of journalism are needed in such an era? Is the satire of Charlie Hebdo helpful or harmful?
NAME CALLING GETS US NOWHERE
Third, there is (or was) no duty to republish all or some of the cartoons. There was a range of ethically permissible options. Calling people cowards is just name calling.
My ethical position is summed up by two slogans:
Journalism is restrained not by causing offense, but by causing harm to interests.
Journalism is restrained not by causing offense, but by causing harm to interests.
A right to offend is balanced by a duty to mend.
HARM TO INTERESTS
Stout defenders of the right to offend get a couple of things right. First, there is (or should be) a legal right to publish — even if it offends — as long as the material respects reasonable restrictions on free speech, such as libel or inciting violence against a group. The stout defenders also are right to reject “being offended” as a fundamental, stand-alone reason to restrict journalism in a democracy.
Why?
Because “being offended” is too restrictive, too trivial or too “wide” a concept. It is too restrictive because it would make robust debate all but impossible. It is too trivial because people can be offended by relatively unimportant things. Does the smell of a person on a bus offend you? Does an overweight person disgust you? It is too wide because it applies to many areas that involve the rights of others, such as the public display of affection (e.g., kissing) among gays.
People can feel offended about almost anything.
Image by Brian Turner and used here with Creative Commons license.
However, it could be objected that we are only considering the easy cases. What about
actions and publications that deeply (not trivially) offend? I hold a neo-Nazis march through a Jewish community. Or, perhaps I claim the following: Pornography reinforces harmful social attitudes towards women, publishing hate speech against gays in a red-neck town creates fear and supports discrimination, university students participating in a Facebook page that ridicules black students as inferior creates a harmful environment on campus.
Doesn’t “being offended” mean something in such cases?
The answer is that the main reason to object is not that they offend — which they do — but that they cause, or are likely to cause, serious harm to individuals or groups. And not just any old harm. Such actions create social environments that are hostile and harmful to individuals and groups. What such environments do, through speech and communication, is thwart, endanger or set back the interests of people.
Words can hurt since humans form beliefs and attitudes through language and communication.
Consider this example: I am director of a journalism school. In the corridors, I express to students my strong and intolerant views about women and black students. Have I the right to offend, absolutely, in this situation? Of course, not. But why not?
Because, apart from being offended, female and black students have a good reason to worry that my attitudes might affect their progress in the school, given my power as director. Further, I am creating a negative environment where certain members of the school do not feel safe and wonder whether they will be able to pursue school opportunities on an equal footing with other students.
Therefore, my offensive communications is wrong and can be restrained, mainly because they cause harm to interests.
For controversial media and speech, looking at possible harms to interests in social contexts is superior to a citizen complaining that they have been offended or a journalist claiming an absolute right to offend. This absolute approach easily becomes a tool of discrimination, by ignoring how speech must be evaluated in terms of social role, institutional setting, and power. If we appeal to an absolute freedom to publish we cannot even discuss such issues. Debate is brought to a halt.
My suggestion, applied to media, is that we evaluate any complaint about a report (or form of journalism) being offensive not in terms of hurt feelings but actual or potential harms to people’s interests, communication environments and the aim of a plural and just society. Of course, we need to evaluate each case on its merits and not presume in advance that a complaint means an actual, serious harm has been done. But what is important is to switch our criteria of evaluation from causing offense to causing harm.
Redefining the issue allows us to more coherently evaluate Charlie Hebdo, hate speech, and insulting material in terms of potential or actual harm to interests.
DUTY TO MEND
Photo by Josh Janssen via Flickr Creative Commons.
My second slogan, the duty to mend, is an extension of the first slogan.
If we restrain journalism by harms to interests, including the impact on social climates, then we imply that journalists have “positive” duties to do socially helpful reporting.
When we talk about environments and the interactions of groups, we expand our ethical vision to the social role of journalism. Journalism ethics becomes more than just a list of negative rules about what not to do in specific situations, such as do not distort the facts. It becomes a form of social action with a set of aims to promote and values to honor.
In my view, journalism’s social duties include promoting the values and goals of democratic society, as defined by the era in question.
Today, the positive duties revolve around constructing a society where people of different conceptions of life can feel safe and equally able to pursue their goods in supportive environments. Journalists should act as bridges of understanding and respectful communication among conflicting groups and traditions. This journalism of dialogue across traditions and borders is crucial for an ethics of global media.
In my view, this role of cultural “translation” is more important than satirical cartoons that deliberately ridicule religions and pay little attention to the need to mend differences.
The key questions in Hebdo-like cases, now and in the future, will be ethical questions of whether certain types of journalism contribute to healthy, peaceful, social environments. What forms of journalism create unhealthy climates of resentment, inequality, and alienation?
These are the issues that need attention.
I propose my “duty to mend” as a principle to balance the enthusiastic support that already exists among journalists for a free press and its right to offend.
It might help to frame the ethical discussion in a wider and more thoughtful manner.
Originally on PBS MediaShift on February 25, 2015; reposted with permission.
Stephen J. A. Ward is an internationally recognized media ethicist, author and educator. He is Distinguished Lecturer of Ethics at the University of British Columbia, Courtesy Professor at the University of Oregon, and founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin.
Four female leaders in sports journalism recently participated in a panel hosted by Northwestern University to give advice to female students interested in pursuing the field, and placed major importance on the focus of the quality of reporting.
Pam Oliver, Rachel Nichols, Christine Brennan and Cassidy Hubbarth participated in “The Female Voice in Sports Media,” an installment of the “Beyond the Box Score” lecture series at Northwestern University. These four women, all prominent women in sports media, offered up their beliefs about being a female and working in sports journalism.
One of the most important topics covered in the lecture that all women addressed was the importance of putting the practices of quality reporting and journalism first.
Pam Oliver, a reporter for Fox Sports and Turner Sports, addressed the issue head on in her opening statement with the panel. Oliver opened up by saying, “It’s a small club of women who put journalism first. They’re not in it to be celebrities or big on Twitter. You can tell when someone is serious with what they are doing. You can tell when someone is putting in the hours to get to know the players and coaches beyond just the smiling and using your looks, or you know, assets to get where you’re going.”
Oliver then went on to comment on what she sees as a current problem in the field of journalism: the hiring of women based on image and look alone. “I think there’s a definite pattern that we’re seeing all across the board with a certain look and a certain quality that papers and media outlets are going after,” Oliver said.
She concluded by saying, “You want to be a journalist for the right reasons. I hope you guys in this room are willing to do the work.”
Oliver’s passion for the focus on the practice of journalism relates to personal experience. Oliver, who served as the long time sideline reporter for NFL on FOX’s top broadcasting team, was taken off the team and replaced by Erin Andrews in 2014. Individuals have speculated that there are other reasons for the replacement of Oliver with Andrews, namely for Oliver’s age and the attractiveness of Andrews.
Brennan, sports columnist for USA Today and the moderator of the panel, commented on the matter, saying, “It seems like for a lot of these people, it is all about looks. Well, looks come and go.”
Sports journalism and print media as a whole has long been dominate by males. This panel at Northwestern highlights a problem that plagues the field of journalism, and these panelists are women who are working to reverse the male-dominated trend in the field. The advice offered up from this conference does not just apply to aspiring female journalists at Northwestern, but all across the country.
The University of Wisconsin Center for Journalism Ethics will be devoting its annual conference to the subject of ethics in sports journalism this April. The conference, titled Fair or Foul: Ethics and Sports Journalism, will cover a wide array of ethical issues and questions in journalism within a sports context on April 10, 2015 at Union South on the UW-Madison campus.
Recent media coverage that claimed the First Lady caused uproar in Saudi Arabia is being called misleading and racist by several media organizations.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama took a trip to Saudi Arabia for the mourning ceremony of Saudi King Abdullah, and the First Lady was seen at the ceremony without a headscarf on, which all Saudi women are required to wear in public.
Reporters across the media landscape claimed that the First Lady received a heavy amount of backlash from the people of Saudi Arabia, and that it was seen as a political stand for the women of Saudi Arabia. Conservative Senator Ted Cruz even shared his own thoughts on the matter, tweeting out, “Kudos to @FLOTUS for standing up for women & refusing to wear Sharia-mandated head-scarf in Saudi Arabia. Nicely Done.”
Several news organizations were quick to point out that Michelle Obama was not making a stand against Saudi society, but was just following what many other women had done before her. Some writers turned away from hard news to in turn criticize those who falsely called the event a controversy, stating that the media was perpetuating stereotypes of Saudi Arabians.
Vox Media reporter Max Fisher reported that the First Lady was simply following standard protocol, and that the two first ladies before her, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, had also not worn headscarves when making visits to the country, and neither did former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He took it a step further, however, stating, “much of the American media has instead only perpetuated the different but very real American problem Islamophobic and anti-Arab stereotyping.”
It was also reported by some major news organizations, including the Washington Post, that the First Lady caused a backlash on twitter. In the Washington Post, it was reported that 1,500 tweets were sent out during the visit by the President and First Lady. However, Wall Street Journal writer Ahmed Al Omran tweeted, “Saudi has millions of Twitter users. When a few hundred of them talk about something, that’s not a backlash. It’s a flicker.”
In addition to just following protocol, some news sources offered up additional reasons as to why they felt the First Lady may not have been wearing a headscarf. The Atlanta Black Star suggested that the First Lady avoided the headscarf so that she would be, “steering clear of any additional fuss from extreme right wing politicians’ obsession with stigmatizing the first family as Muslims.” President Obama has long been falsely labeled as a Muslim since 2006.
Vox took it a step further, stating that, “American media completely freaked out, got a number of basic facts wildly wrong, and did so all in a way that insulted that country and its citizens by perpetuating racist stereotypes.” Vox later reiterated their view, stating that the coverage of the First Lady in Saudi Arabia, “has instead only perpetuated the different but very real American problem of Islamophobic and anti-Arab stereotyping.
t’s 1955. On CBS, a deep-voiced announcer backs a jittery reel of black-and-white stills.
“October 8, 1871,” he intones with high drama. “The Chicago Fire.”
And then the hook: “You. Are. There.”
Screenshot courtesy of Chicago Film Archives, captured January 17, 2015.
The CBS News production then cuts to Walter Cronkite at the anchor desk, aside a microphone, script in hand. “Walter Cronkite reporting. October 8th, 1871. In this year and month, we are suffering in Chicago…”
“You Are There” was a CBS reenactment series through which anchor Cronkite would transport viewers to a historical event and treat it as though he were reporting it live. Breathless on-scene reporters, actors serving as famous sources and fake footage were all intended to put the audience in the scene of events like the Hindenburg disaster, the Revolutionary War or the Great Chicago Fire. Though easy to criticize today as staged and hokey docudrama, “You Are There” was nonetheless a novel effort during the heady experimental days of early television news.
We are in those heady days again, still seeking to carry our audiences to scenes to help them experience – and feel – the news of the day. But today, the experimentation comes in the form of a headset, a virtual reality approach that puts its wearer “in” the environment. And with that transport, come key ethical questions about representation, privacy, intellectual property and media effects.
The Technology
Virtual reality is not new. Beginning mainly in the 1960s with flight simulation, VR – also known as “augmented reality” or “immersive multimedia” – picked up speed with an MIT project mapping Aspen, Colorado, through video. The concept is simple: use a headset device to simulate a physical environment through sensory experiences, most commonly sight and sound.
Development in virtual reality today is driven largely by the gaming sector and consumers’ apparently insatiable appetite for those experiences. Industry leader Oculus, known primarily for its emerging Oculus Rift device, envisions a world of consumer-grade headsets that put a gamer into the experience of “Call of Duty” or “Grand Theft Auto.” That vision took a major step forward in 2014 with the arrival of the Samsung Gear VR, a virtual reality headset powered by smartphone, rather than the expensive desktop computers previously needed for processor-heavy simulations.
These headsets provide two kinds of virtual experience: animation or video. Both attempt to recreate reality and allow the user to walk virtually through scenes. With an Oculus Rift strapped on, a user can go into the animated environment of a Tuscan estate. The scene tracks with body movements, as users turn their heads or use keystrokes to ascend a staircase or peer over a stone wall. Through the Gear VR, they can go into a performance of Cirque du Soleil created through 360-degree video, watching various performers as if sitting on the stage itself.
But VR potential extends far beyond gaming and entertainment. In January, the United Nations debuted an emotional immersive experience following a Syrian refugee girl, “Clouds Over Sidra.” The piece is viewable on the Gear VR via its Milk VR delivery system, a.k.a., “the YouTube for Virtual Reality.” To appreciate the differences inherent in an immersive experience, watch a reporter explore a refugee camp through the Gear VR.
With that view, the potential for journalism is almost immediately apparent. Though its commercial prospects pale in comparison with gaming, immersive journalism is already in production. And in fact, one of the leaders in this space, documentary filmmaker Nonny de la Peña, has earned acclaim with Syria as her immersive focus, as well. Recently called “The Godmother of Virtual Reality,” she is working on all aspects of VR in journalism, including hardware development, reporting and virtual rendering.
As de la Peña explained to the BBC, immersive approaches advance journalism by putting the audience into a place and giving them a sensory connection with it.
“It creates a duality of presence. You know you’re ‘here,’ but you feel like you’re ‘there’ too. And the experience is much more visceral. It’s really a kind of a whole-body experience and is very unique – different than radio, than television, than any other kind of format for experiencing a story,” de la Peña says.
Dan Pacheco, professor and Horvitz Chair in Journalism Innovation at the S.I. Newhouse journalism school at Syracuse University, is experimenting with these technologies with students. He says that while the world is excited about what VR will do for gamers, he’s thrilled by the potential for transforming citizens’ knowledge of the world around them.
“We no longer have to be limited to telling stories. We can take you into an experience,” Pacheco says. “No matter how many times you tell a story, people don’t feel it. Once you start to show it, it’s a little better but still far, far away. Once you can move someone into an experience, that’s really the key.”
He has first-hand experience, having served as a consultant on Gannett’s first foray into virtual reality – a tour of an Iowa farm as part of its “Harvest of Change” series. The VR approach puts viewers into the farm environment, enabling them to navigate around barns and approach giant tractors. Visual cues open doors to more information on elements of the farm. The experience is best using the Oculus Rift headset, but others can get a sense of the experience using the Unity player on a web browser.
The place-based feeling of VR is particularly important for stories depending on a sense of space and perspective. The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri experimented with an animated VR approach to cover eyewitness statements in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. A walk through their output, helmed by graphic journalist and RJI fellow Dan Archer, shows some of the possibilities of VR for journalism.
Each witness’ perspective is virtually apparent as the user experiences his or her statements. This gives the reporting an angle that’s not quite possible with text. Video would capture the sense of space, but cannot give the user the same control over movement. The package is rudimentary, as the technology is nascent, but provides a window into what will be possible in the future.
“It comes down to a much-abused term that’s being bandied about these days: empathy,” Archer says. “I first got into graphic journalism as a way of placing the reader at the heart of a news story by using art to visualize the accounts of my interviewees from their first-person perspective. That was several years ago, and the technology … has at last almost caught up to speed.”
As with all emerging media platforms, VR presents opportunities, but also demands serious ethical consideration. In some cases, traditional ethics contested over decades help inform our judgments. But in others, the very immersion itself prompts questions we have not yet tackled in journalism.
How real is the virtual?
Ethical questions begin with the basics. When constructing an animated virtual reality, what steps can be taken to make it as real as possible? What are the dimensions of surrounding buildings? What are the colors and shapes of people in the scene? What’s the relative perspective between the user and the trees around her?
In the case the Ferguson package, the VR rendering shows a blue sky with puffy white clouds. But video from the scene shows a more gray, dreary day. Does this matter for the story? Would it change the audience’s understanding? All of these questions must factor into animated recreations. But they’re also issues in 360-degree video. One would imagine it to be less fraught with potential for distortion, yet video that’s captured in 360 degrees still has to be edited in two dimensions. This can interfere with rendering reality as it was caught on the original video.
It’s important to recognize, however, that virtual reality does not introduce these concerns in significantly new ways. De la Peña faced criticism early in her work from those who claimed VR journalism was too subjective and thus could not be ethical. Yet when operating in text, still, video, audio or interactivity, we’re continually making judgment calls about what to cover, what to render and how to do it. VR certainly poses issues of subjectivity, but they are extensions of critical questions we need to be asking ourselves in all platforms.
Archer, in fact, notes that VR as a form holds promise for helping users recognize subjectivity because the choices are so apparent in a graphically rendered environment.
“All we can do is be open and honest with readers, and highlight what we chose to include and exclude.” Archer says. “My hope is that using this process we can lean more heavily on readers to explore what the notion of ‘truth’ is using this new virtual frame of reference.”
Whose reality is it?
Just as we must with any text, video, audio or interactive story, we must wrestle with the sourcing in virtual reality packages. The Ferguson piece lays this bare. Source perspective, motivations and biases all play roles in the creation of the virtual environment. Certainly the number of feet between a window and a road can be measured, scaled and recreated in VR. But where a person says she stood and what she says she saw are less certain. Yet when they are rendered in a virtual environment, they are necessarily made more real for the audience.
Who owns a reality?
The “Harvest of Change” series, the virtual tour of the Iowa farm, quickly raised questions of intellectual property and trademark. Does recreating an exact animation of a trademarked tractor design infringe on that design? Does it do so with iconic public buildings? With emerging technologies, we often find law lagging behind what’s possible. Ethics must fill the breach, as we weigh others’ rights to their creations and the implications of our own recreations.
How much does this cost?
The ethics of economics matter in an age of news media disruption. The “Harvest of Change” package – while fascinating and exciting – came at time when Gannett laid off dozens of employees at its flagship paper. Although Pacheco says the cost of the VR package was not exorbitant (he’s barred from disclosing exact figures), expenditures on experimentation always come at the expense of other elements of news gathering. This context, however, demonstrates that funding experimental platforms and approaches may be one of the most justifiable expenditures of strained resources – within reason, of course. Virtual reality is expected to capture an audience through gaming that has been particularly elusive for news media: teens and young adults. These virtual platforms may be an ideal way to stimulate their interaction with news, serving them as citizens. But this requires a focused, thoughtful strategy, rather than merely chasing the latest toy. It also requires that we consider for whom we are developing these technology uses and whether we are leaving important audience segments out. Early speculation was that the cost of an Oculus Rift would make it a rich kid’s toy, at best. Yet the Gear VR is surprisingly affordable and because it runs off a mobile phone, its potential is open to a more diverse set of users who would otherwise lack consistent access to a desktop machine.
Whose expectations matter?
Privacy is clearly one of the largest ethical considerations for journalists with immersives, especially 360-degree video. As with drones capable of low-cost capture of video, still images and sound from the air above both public and private property, use of video and even animations for virtual reality poses the risk of invading privacy. Law is sorely behind technological development in this arena, so ethics are more crucial than ever.
“We’re not that far from drones flying all over the place and capturing everything,” Pacheco says. “Pandora’s Box opened back in the ‘70s and we’re not going to be able to close that. It’s going to be interesting to see how people use that for good and how they use it in morally and ethically questionable ways.”
Privacy, especially in law, is largely premised on the protection of personal space, and we punish intrusions into that space. We ask where a person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy” and generally conclude that such expectations are far stronger in personal spaces than in public ones. A woman has a reasonable expectation of privacy in her kitchen, but not in, say, a Starbucks in downtown Chicago.
But privacy is not merely a question of law. As media ethicist Cliff Christians notes, privacy is also a fundamental moral good. While privacy is essential for individual flourishing, protecting such human development is ultimately a common good.
“A private domain gives people their own identity and unique self-consciousness within the human species … Privacy as a moral good is nonnegotiable because controlling our life’s core is essential to our personhood,” Christians writes.
In an age when technology enables a transformation from simple observation to sophisticated surveillance, journalism must wrestle with the implications of this possibility. Virtual reality that relies on video capture, for instance, poses the problem of incidental capture. Imagine an immersive experience designed to transport users to a Liberian hospital treating patients with Ebola. Although currently limited in scope, technology will quickly be able to transmit live 360-degree video from such a hospital. Even if the clinicians or patients in focus consent to their story being used, the camera will pick up the full scope of the scene and enable users to move themselves in for closer looks. We must consider the privacy of the people within that scene.
And while VR would commonly be assumed to be more easily justified in a public setting – say, a street – the sophistication of the capture will also include spaces normally deemed private – say, a person’s living room windows. As we have struggled to conceptualize and deal with the privacy implications of emerging technologies like Google Street View, we will have to contend with the invasiveness of virtual reality. But the stakes increase with its use in journalism, specifically because news is so often about capturing people’s most difficult moments.
When is the virtual too real?
While some evidence is emerging that virtual reality may be useful as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, Pacheco and others worry about the effects of putting people in stressful situations through VR. The concern is that renderings that are sufficiently real may trigger memory as though the user actually experienced a place or event. No one could mistake Walter Cronkite’s staged Chicago Fire coverage as real. But consider a virtual reality headset with video images of fire, plus the sound of crackling and gusting, plus the thick smell of smoke, plus the sense of growing warmth. These sensations have far more potential to induce trauma.
VR coverage of war, torture, rape and other violence will prompt searing questions about lasting consequences of consuming journalism that eclipse our current research on media effects. All of these considerations must factor into uses of virtual reality for journalism, keeping subjects and audiences more firmly in mind than the mere possibilities the technology affords, Pacheco says.
“The most important thing that we need to keep in mind with immersive and experiential media is that because people feel like they’re somewhere else, you always need to keep the experience of the user as the most important ethical consideration.”
Kathleen Bartzen Culver is an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication and associate director of the Center for Journalism Ethics. This essay was originally posted on February 4, 2015 at digital ethics.org, the website of the Center for Digital Ethics at Loyola University Chicago.
The chief White House correspondent from one of the largest news organizations in the country recently came under fire from a left-leaning media watch organization for his involvement in an event hosted by a right-leaning organization.
Jon Karl, a veteran reporter for ABC News, recently moderated a panel discussion between Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz that was hosted by the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, an organization that is headed by the Koch brothers, Charles and David. The organization has been called the brothers’ “secret bank.”
Karl’s active participation at the event comes under criticism, according to ThinkProgress.org, because his involvement indirectly lends credibility to an event put on by a partisan organization. ThinkProgress.com, itself a liberal-leaning news media website, spoke with several media ethics experts across the country about the matter.
Marc Cooper, the Director of Annenberg Digital News and an associate professor of professional practice at the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism, voiced his personal disapproval of Karl’s involvement. “The public has no input or access and no public service is being performed. Karl has no business being there.”
Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, also offered her opinion to ThinkProgress, saying that it appears Karl, “negotiated an arrangement that should allow him to act reasonably independently,” and she didn’t consider the involvement of Karl or ABC News as a contribution to the Koch’s group. Personally, on the other hand, Kirtley voiced her own potential concerns about the matter, saying, “I do think it’s problematic when working journalists ‘moderate’ gatherings of political groups, industry groups, etc. – especially when those groups or topics relate to the beats they cover.”
ThinkProgress also cited the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics when discussing the issue, which says journalists should, “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” and, “avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.”
While some major traditional news sources reported on the event, including Time and ABC News, covered the event, ThinkProgress was the only organization covering the event to mention the potential ethics breach.
ould go on to become the new boxing reporter for the paper, and wrote for the publication until 1971, when he left to write novels and movies. He wrote his first young adult novel , “The Contender,” while still a reporter at the Times.
