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A pedestrian bridge on Florida International University’s campus collapsed March 15, 2018, killing nine people and injuring six more. Brant Houston, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois, has more than two decades of experience as an investigative reporting and has covered many similar incidents. The Center for Journalism Ethics talked with Houston about the ethical challenges of covering such incidents and about the current state of investigative journalism at-large.

Can journalism outlets and more specifically investigative reporting units continue to devote resources to some of these infrastructure related stories before problems occur or do the lack of resources lead to them being more reactionary in their coverage?

Well there are newsrooms that do these before hand, say a single thing like a pedestrian bridge maybe not, but one thing that is typically done across the country is news organizations is looking at bridge inspection. Oddly enough, pedestrian bridges don’t fall under the Department of Transportation rules and so pedestrian bridges are pretty much left up to municipalities. But in any case, newsrooms are doing stories before hand. One of the greatest examples was the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which four years before Hurricane Katrina did a five-part series on the devastation that would hit New Orleans if a major hurricane landed. So that’s probably one of the best examples I ever saw of investigative reporters and editors being proactive and we actually put that on the front of our web page showing an attempt of a newsroom to give a warning. There are stories that are done ahead of time and bridge inspection ones seem the best. Now, certainly, you saw a lot more of those stories after a Minneapolis-St. Paul bridge collapse where everybody is looking at their bridges and the same thing in Seattle. I think people tend to forget the stories done beforehand. They remember the stories done after, but seldom to do they remember right away: “We were warned about that.”

Is it difficult to allocate those resources to infrastructure projects as sometimes in inspecting them, there are no problems to be found?

I think it’s tougher for what would have been the traditional print newsroom. I think there’s no question about that. We probably lost 60 percent or more of the editorial staff, at least in the U.S. and that’s just a fact that you can’t always do more with less. I do think that the smaller newsroom and even the greatly reduced newsrooms can do more with accountability because of the increasing sophistication when it comes to using data. So, for example, there’s no way a newsroom now could really do what it could do on bridges if there wasn’t a national bridge inventory, which is a database of all the bridges in the United States. And, in addition, states have them and the other thing that’s happened, at least since 2001, a lot of the databases that were taken down on national infrastructure have gone back up. Not enough, but they have gone back up. So for example, there is the national dam inventory and even when they took that down after 9/11 you could still use it because dams don’t move unless they collapse so a lot of the data was still good.

How else do you think data has changed investigative reporting?

One way is that you can go through tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of documents very quickly. And with even a rudimentary look at things whether in Pivot Table in Excel or a query in a database manager, you can quickly see patterns and outliers. And that used to take days and weeks – really weeks and months – and that can be done once you have the skills within a couple of hours, so that changes things. Second of all, you have so much more credibility that used to be way back then you couldn’t look through all the documents, say 10,000 documents, you could look at 200 randomly or do a spot check. Now you say, “We looked at the whole population of documents, this is what they say.” You can also say, “You’re making policy on these documents, but you know what, we looked at them and they’re flawed. So how can you make reasonable policy when you’re working with flawed data.” So that takes you to a whole new level of investigative reporting. You now have the ability to do profound stories that you couldn’t do before and certainly you couldn’t do now unless you had those skills.

How has social media changed investigative reporting?

I think we’re continuing to develop the best ways to analyze social media, but one of the great examples was a few years ago at The Guardian in which it looked at where the rioters and race riots they had in several major cities were coming from and how they communicated. We couldn’t have done that without access to social media and without the tools to see those kinds of patterns. So that’s changed too.

We’ve also had the ability to crowdsource. So although there is some unreliability with crowdsourcing you’re at least getting a much broader section of comments then you would have if you were just walking down the street.

What are the biggest ethical challenges of the crowdsourcing method?

I think you can get tips from social media, but I think the credibility of who’s sending you them – as we all know from the rise of the bots – the credibility of those folks is a challenge. Now, on the other hand, if you find that there is a lot going on that doesn’t have credibility that it’s bots or it’s trolls, then there you have another story. But you do have to look at the credibility of them.

There are always the three pillars of reporting. Those are data documents, interviewing real people with real people and then there is observation, that’s getting out in the field. So for example, on bridge data, it’s incredibly important that journalists talk to experts and inspectors and so fourth, but they also should go out and look at some of the bridges that are supposed to be so bad. So if you’re doing all three, you have a much better chance at being credible and trustworthy and getting the story right.

Can citizens seek these records out? Can they have some role in investigating these potential infrastructure shortcomings?

I think that more and more of that has happened. The challenge that people have is a lot of people say, “anyone can be a citizen journalist.” Well, anyone who has gotten training or on the job training or education training knows that there are a lot of things you have to learn to be a credible reporter, but there’s no question that someone steeped in data analysis can  get on the web, see some open government information and do some basic analysis and point out some basic problems or issues. Again, there’s some folks that say, I’ll do some quick analysis, I’ll do some visualization, I’ll throw it up on the web. If you throw it up there without some kind of explanation and some kind of understanding, it’s interesting but it doesn’t necessarily always attract attention or doesn’t get even understanding from an audience.

Years ago, Adrian Holovaty and his team at Everyblock, (a neighborhood news and discussion site) did some great work in terms of visualizing data, but they didn’t check it out in terms of what journalists did. They ended visualizing crime data in Los Angeles a few years ago, and the data had some serious flaws. It put crimes in locations which crimes never occurred and if they had looked at where some of those crimes were clustered there’s no way they could have occurred there and the Los Angeles Times did a very nice job when it analyzed the data and also did a nice, wide interview with Adrian Holovaty on the importance of checking the integrity of data.

And so, a number of programmers have said that when they switch to becoming journalists, they are surprised that you really need to get it right on the first try because they’re used to going through several versions of software until they get it right.

In general, what are some of the biggest challenges you think investigative reporters face? Or similarly, what do challenges newsrooms face when dealing with investigative reporting?

Time. It’s always been time. Investigative reporting often requires more time. Time is money. Time is taken away from other potential stories. It’s riskier in that you don’t know what your result is. If you’re doing it in certain countries, it’s risky to your health and well-being in life.

There are a series of risks, the first risk being that you’re going to spend time on something and not come back with something. Investigative reporting in some ways is the research and development arm of journalism. So there’s a risk of not coming back with something and then there’s a risk of being threatened, crossing funders or advertisers and there’s the risk of having the people you’re reporting on come after you either verbally, physically, and these days electronically. There are a number of journalists in the U.S. that have trolls coming after them all the time.

Are there certain ethical concerns investigative reporters face when they go out in the field?

The stakes are usually higher, so that the ethical concerns are typical to that of a doctor, so first of all, do no harm or minimize harm. So I believe there are ethical challenges almost daily in investigative reporting. If this comes out how will it impact this person or this institution? Are you hearing the other sides of a story thoroughly enough. Just by making a phone call can you expose somebody to attack or ridicule. You’re trying to make sure you’re taking care of people while you’re doing this in the proper way. And possibly if you have a story that could result in the resignation or the loss of a job of someone that’s high impact. So you better think about ethics everyday.

From the perspective of a professor, when teaching students about investigative journalism, how do you break the mold and show them that investigative journalism is not all the glamour that movies like Spotlight or All the President’s Men make them out to be?

I think you learn by doing. And I think Spotlight and even All the President’s Men did show some of the challenging drudgery of doing investigative reporting. But I think the romance of, “Oh I made a couple of calls and now I have a great story,” disappears very quickly after you’ve had to spend the equivalent of a day looking through data or documents. You realize it’s the excitement or interest in looking at content or talking to people that keeps you going. So I teach it by people working on stories. I had a class in which two students had to keep going back to the department of environmental education in Illinois and the data was incomplete and then it was incomplete again. The bloom is off the romance after about the third time you have to go back and you’re still getting incomplete information.

What are the basics you first emphasize with students who are learning about investigative reporting?

Well there’s one that the great team of Don Barlett and Jim Steele had which was getting in a document state of mind. I think journalists are used to doing interviews. Even though you have to practice and get better at them, they’re used to doing interviews. They’re used to walking down that road, going out and interviewing people, getting out into the field or getting people on email. But to actually say, “I want to find a document that either supports, contradicts or gives some nuance to what somebody just said,” or will give that to somebody you will interview in the future, I think that takes some practice, getting in that document state of mind.

The other thing I would mention is that taking on investigative reporting class doesn’t mean you’ll become an investigative reporter. It does ensure that you’ll be a much better reporter and if you’re editing the stories, you’ll have to become a much better editor. So one of the reasons that investigative reporters in the global investigative network are so popular is that by taking their training you get skills that you can use in everyday and weekly and monthly reporting. That’s something else I also emphasize. You may not want to do the long-term project that results in a series of stories or one big story, but you know whatever story you touch after you get these skills is better.

What skills are most important?

Data. The ability to seek out data and documents. The fact that you should improve your interviewing techniques, I think it improves your preparation for interviews. It’s as basic as not asking somebody how to spell their name, but asking them to confirm the spelling that you’ve got the spelling right.

The one other thing I want to mention more than ever is the need for thoroughness and the need for accuracy and the need for transparency, especially, if there’s some uncertainty in what you have in your data or in your interviews. I think some reporters are worried about having uncertainty in there reporting and I think investigative reporting training will give a reporter the confidence to say, “This is as much as we know.”

Jill Geisler, the newly appointed Newseum Institute Fellow in Women’s Leadership, recently modered a program which focused on what interns, employers and educators should know and should do to maintain ensure workplace integrity. The Center for Journalism Ethics talked with Geisler, who is also the Bill Plante Chair in Leadership and Media Integrity at Loyola University Chicago, about the challenges, obligations and successes she has observed of interns as the #MeToo movement has progressed.

Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you see interns face as they enter a newsroom for the first time?

Up until the #MeToo movement I would have told you that it was about establishing yourself as a professional. And while that is still true, what we have learned from the more intense focus on sexual misconduct in newsrooms. It relates to power, and the least powerful people in any organization are interns, temporary employees, freelance employees and the very youngest and least experienced. And so, that population is the most vulnerable to harassment and discrimination. It’s caused me and it’s caused other people to say, “Let’s revisit how we prepare our newest journalists for internships and for their first jobs.”

I think we always felt that we never wanted to enphantalize our students. We never wanted to treat you like students. We never wanted to patronize. We wanted to treat you like adults, and we still do. What we’ve now realized is that even young adults in the workplace can be vulnerable. And it doesn’t mean that every place that you might work is ripe with predators, waiting to pounce on you. But what we’ve realized is that those who have been fired for that reason sometimes used “Let’s talk about your career” as the entry point for changing the subject to “Let’s talk about your personal life” [or] “Let’s talk about your sexuality.” And because of that, we now know that we have a greatest obligation to incorporate that information and how to deal with it, how to be prepared for it, into the teaching that we do with our students.

Q: Is this obligation new?

I don’t think it was the absence of an obligation. It was the absence of an understanding of its importance. Again, I’ve spent a lot of my lifetime as a professional going to career night talks, giving advice to young journalists about their careers and now as an educator, I give that advice. Never in any of that time, in any career fair, did I ever say, “And by the way, let’s talk a little bit about how to respond if you are in the presence of harassment, discriminatory conversations, bullying, uncivil behavior.” We haven’t had that in no small part because to talk about it is to acknowledge that it exists and I think we all wanted to believe that if it existed it was minimal. And now what we’ve realized is that there’s more of it then we might have wanted to believe.

Q: What role does the university play in preparing interns for some of these challenges?

I’m doing a separate, “Powers to the Interns” evening at Loyola on March 19, and I’m doing it in corporation with the head of the journalism department and instead of just talking about careers because I’ve already done a career night. Instead of it being focused on how to do your resume, it’s really going to be focused on the potential for being in the presence of bullying, discrimination, harassment, telling racist jokes. What do you do as the youngest professional in the room who wants to make a good impression but is hearing this from colleagues? And that’s not just about sexual harassment because this is beyond that we’re talking about workplace integrity. What we’ve determined as the focus of the Power Shift Summit is that workplace integrity involves an atmosphere free of harassment and discrimination.

Q: What is the importance a diverse staff in helping interns successfully enter newsrooms?

People’s behavior changes in the presence of people who bring a diverse perspective. When we’re all alike there’s too much of an opportunity for group think, there’s too much of an opportunity to believe that everyone thinks like us, so what we think is funny, everybody thinks is funny, what we think is fair game, everybody thinks is fair game. To give you an example: One of my students said that as an intern she was on a chat group – and the people involved didn’t know that she was watching – while one of them wrote about who was going to bang the intern. How does she respond to that? How does she respond if there’s no HR department.

Q: What impact can mentors then have?

Mentorship is important. But having a process for reporting something that is inappropriate, for getting advice, for determining whether what you’ve heard is intended to be what that person said. All of those things are critically important.

Let’s turn this into a process. It starts at the university level: preparing people professionally for the work, for the work ethic and for how to respond to things that are inappropriate. And then giving them mentors in the organization. Having the company prepare its interns. As an employer you need to have a process that both prepares them and briefs the staff on what’s appropriate and inappropriate behavior. Now it feels that it should be simple, that we should all know that, and that’s why it felt like people didn’t have to train us previously because we felt that people would instinctively do the right thing. But now we know that that doesn’t always happen.

Q: What are the some of the successful reporting or less successful reporting tactics you’ve observed?

NPR right now has developed a team of volunteer staff members who exist to help people who may have a question, have a concern, who don’t feel comfortable going to HR. They can go to these colleagues who have actually taken some training and work with them to get advice on whether they should report, how they should report and how they should respond. Sometimes people don’t know for sure if they’ve been targeted. If you’re manager says, “let’s go to lunch and talk about your career,” it could be something or it could be nothing. What women have often done over the years is called the whisper network: “What about him?” or “When he hugs me is he being friendly or is he trying to take advantage of me?” Those informal networks have existed, sometimes because people thought that they couldn’t talk to HR.

Q: What role do men play in reporting harassment and assault in the workplace?

Men play a huge role. First of all, this is not an exclusively women issue, men can be victimized just as much as women, and men, when women are victimized, can be allies. There’s a whole concept of active bystanders which universities are already and started with partying, so now there’s the whole active bystanders concept goes to the workplace.

This is not just a white women’s issue. This is an issue that transcends race, it transcends gender and it sometimes is multiplied for people who are female and are people of color, who may experience multiple forms of either harassment or discrimination. Some of it is subtle and some of it is blatant. But again we don’t want to scare anybody from going into the workplace nor do we want them to think it’s full of snakes. But, if there’s one snake, I want to make sure it doesn’t bite you.

Editor’s note: Lindsay Palmer led Cultures in Conflict: Navigating Cultural Difference in International Human Rights Reporting conference Feb. 9 and 10, which was co-sponsored by the Center for Journalism Ethics. Information about the conference is here.

A 25-year-old woman, covered from head to toe in burn scars, might strike some photojournalists as a victim. In fact, photographing this woman from the perspective of pity, repulsion, or even plain curiosity, might even be more lucrative for a photojournalist trying to get quick money for a picture.

But for documentarian and photographer Gillian Laub, it was crucial to slow down and spend more time with Kinneret, a young lady in Tel Aviv who had suffered serious burn wounds across 70 percent of her body during the Second Intifada. If she could spend more time engaging with this woman, then Laub thought her photographs might capture something more than victimhood. With some work, her photos might reflect the optimism and resilience that drove Kinneret to write these words: “My goal is to show the world that the force of life is stronger than everything.”

Speaking at a recent conference on ethics in human rights reporting, Laub reflected on Kinneret’s remarkable strength — something that still inspired her years after she included Kinneret’s haunting statement in her photo monograph Testimony. From Laub’s perspective, human rights photographers and reporters should strive to avoid the easy path of “victimization,” instead looking for the more complicated stories of subtle resistance — the quieter ways in which people who have suffered terrible atrocities can stand up and move forward.

The theme of searching for the more complicated stories surfaced again and again at a conference on international human rights reporting Feb. 9 and 10 at University of Wisconsin-Madison. And it was arguably the female journalists who spearheaded this discussion. The women who participated as keynote speakers and panelists overwhelmingly asserted the need for human rights reporters to slow down, engage more with sources, and seek different perspectives.

Female human rights reporters often tout this philosophy, as some of my own research on war reporting has shown. In the process of interviewing female correspondents who work in warzones, I’ve noticed that some women in this field repeatedly tend to emphasize the concept of a more “human” human rights story. They try not to look “down” on the catastrophes from a distance, reducing those horrors to statistics, dramas between governments, or descriptions of military might. Instead, these women look for the diverse stories of the people on the ground, engaging with their complexity rather than making them small.

This phenomenon begs the question: What is it about the female journalist that engenders this different style of human rights reporting? And how might female reporters contribute to a more ethical human rights journalism?

To answer that tricky question, we might want to take a moment to define the slippery term “female” in the first place, something that feminist activists and scholars have been trying to do for centuries. By the late 20^th century, feminist thinkers were beginning to doubt that the words “woman” and “female” could adequately account for diverse lived experiences of all the human subjects who had been placed within these categories, sometimes against their own will.

There was also the fear of “essentialism” — the misguided idea that all women share “essential” characteristics that are rooted in the body and impossible to change. Far too often, women’s ostensibly “essential” characteristics have been used to hold them back, to claim that they can’t succeed, and that they have no contribution to make (other than giving birth). The fear of essentialism likely explains why other female human rights journalists do not emphasize any unique style of reporting, instead vehemently arguing that they are no different from men, and that they work in exactly the same way.

At first glance, examining female journalists’ unique contributions to human rights reporting might look very much like essentialism. Surely the differences between a white, cis-gendered female journalist from Australia and a brown, trans-gendered female journalist from Colombia are too vast to gloss over, even for the sake of philosophical discussion. And doesn’t the invocation of “women’s contribution” simply impose that same difference (and, by extension, degradation) upon the resourceful people who cover war and conflict just as well as (and often, better than) male journalists?

I would answer “yes” to each of the above questions. Yet, at the same time, I would also argue that if we get rid of “essential” notions of femininity and instead focus on socio-cultural positioning, then my original question is still worth considering. As numerous feminist scholars have argued, gender is culturally constructed. It’s a position within a particular social world, and the experience of it differs drastically across cultures and communities. Some people choose to leave that position and seek out a new one. Others continue on with the gender they have been given, but they use that experience to see their society from a different angle.

The takeaway here is that different socio-cultural positions imply the possibility of different perspectives — not the “essential” reality, in every case, for everyone. But certainly, the possibility. Because human rights reporters who have been identified as “female” are typically placed in a less-privileged social position than their male colleagues, they have the potential to offer their news audiences a very different perspective on the events they are covering.

This is important, because so many of the events that human rights reporters cover are directly related to social privilege — or to put it more bluntly, to the stark inequalities that have only been exacerbated in the era of globalization. Because they already know something about inequality, female-identified journalists might be better positioned to shed light on inequalities.

But getting rid of “essential” notions of femininity also means that we’d have to push past the idea that only women can provide these different perspectives. By the late 20^th century, a number of feminist scholars and activists themselves started arguing for the intersectionality of cultural identity, encouraging people to think more carefully about the multiplicity (and interrelatedness) of difference. These thinkers wanted to understand how other types of identity — race, sexuality, social class, nationality, religion — could also have an impact on the way someone experiences the world. In fact, understanding and engaging with these various types of socio-cultural identity became part of the feminist mission.

Following this, maybe we should change our original question and ask the following: what can human rights journalists who are culturally positioned as “different” or “other” from their more socially privileged colleagues contribute to the practice of human rights reporting? And is there a “feminist” and “intersectional” approach to human rights journalism that would allow for more ethical coverage of the vast inequalities that plague the world today?

Venezuelan photojournalist Adriana Fernández seems to think about human rights reporting in this way. At the recent human rights conference at UW-Madison, Fernández told the audience about a time when she had to cover the accidental death of a pregnant 18-year-old woman in Venezuela. Alexandra Conopoy had been killed by a drunk member of the military police while waiting in line for government-subsidized food in the Venezuelan town of Charallave. After this incident, numerous reporters scrambled to gain access to Conopoy’s family, hoping for an exclusive interview or a “great shot” that they could sell to a big international news agency.

Rather than hounding the family, Fernández thought about how she could relate to these people—what social, cultural, and national experiences did they share? What must they be suffering, and what sense of injustice must they feel? In other words, she tried to see the incident from the family’s perspective, rather than from the perspective of a detached journalist trying to narrativize their pain for a foreign audience. And instead of maintaining an “objective distance” from the family, Fernández told them how sorry she was for what they had been through and sat quietly with them as they processed their loss. Eventually, the family granted Fernández permission to shadow them as they attended the funeral. One of her photos from the funeral directly reflects her empathizing position, her more engaged approach to covering the story.

It’s important to note that Fernández and Laub’s approaches to human rights reporting are not “essentially” female—male reporters can engage in this kind of journalism too, and some of them do. However, there is a certain advantage to being socio-culturally positioned as an “other.” The lived experience of inhabiting this culturally-inscribed position — one that is typically not as privileged as the white, Western male position — can perhaps make it easier to relate to other injustices in the world, and to recognize the subtlety of strength.

But because this approach to human rights reporting does not depend on “essential” notions of gender, race, nationality, or any other type of social identity, there’s another important point that needs to be made. Ideally, all human rights journalists could strive for this more careful approach to covering the world’s conflicts and atrocities.  All human rights journalists could think more critically about their own social position, taking the time to better understand the perspectives that might drastically differ from those of the socially-privileged. With intersectional feminist correspondents leading the way, this important type of international reporting could become more ethical, more nuanced, and more focused on the “human” element of human rights journalism.

One of the researchers of a study that finds Republicans and supporters of President Donald Trump have far more negative attitudes toward the press than Democrats and Trump opponents, doubts that incremental changes in news ethics will make a significant change in media trust.

Andrew Guess, who along with Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, studied media trust along ideological and partisan lines for the Poynter Institute.

The researchers additionally find exposure to anti-media messages, including attacks by Trump on “fake news,” have relatively limited effects on attitudes toward the press.Their research also suggests that Republicans and Trump supporters are far more likely to endorse extreme claims about media fabrication, to describe journalists as an enemy of the people and to support restrictions on press freedom than Democrats and Trump opponents. Overall, the majority of the public does support the press, albeit weakly.

According to Guess, however, the pattern of polarized media trust by party is not a particularly new phenomenon.

But nevertheless, finding a solution to reduce such problems, seems to be a complicated process.

“I think that we can begin by acknowledging that there is a trust problem,” said Indira Lakshmanan a Washington columnist for the Boston Globe and Newmark Chair in Journalism Ethics at the Poynter Institute said. “I think that one of the most important things in that regard is figuring out why we have the problem.”

Lakshmanan said she believes increasing transparency about the reporting process and reducing the use of anonymous sources might help increase the trust people have in the media.

Guess, while acknowledging increasing transparency, crediting sources and correcting mistakes are positive steps that may help, these measures will be unlikely unlikely to shift people’s views as drastically as some journalists might think.

“It seems kinda unlikely that a little bit of extra transparency about the way that reporting is done is gonna move a lot of these attitudes,” he said.

Instead, Guess also suggested that media organizations should work to avoid any appearance of partisanship and reach out to Republicans and Trump supporters who affirm the importance of a free press. Doing so might create a more bipartisan consensus on the importance of journalism in a free society.

Additionally, Nyhan told Poynter that it feels like “double-edged sword” to try an increase trust through the work of one political party.

“We’ve seen these dynamics occur on issues with scientists and their perception is being affiliated with the Democratic Party, and it really harms scientific credibility in the public debate,” Nyhan said. “If journalists go down the same road and become seen as part of the Democratic [Party] coalition, I think it’s very harmful to the ability of all you to do your jobs and to create this reasonably broad, shared consensus about the nature of reality that we’d like to hope is a mission of journalism.”

Another suggestion from Guess to reduce potential media polarization is to initiate more opportunities for journalists to speak to Americans around the country “outside of the partisan fray.”

“Maybe there is also some merit to getting out there and speaking to people as people and not as journalists,” he said.

“I think we know what the problem is now,” Lakshmanan said. “I think it’s time we find a solution.”

Drones aren’t just for large newsrooms.

Brittany Schmidt, journalist and reporter for WBAY-TV in Green Bay, said drones are especially important for small and mid-size news markets.

“Instead of talking about the remodeling of this huge, 80,000 square foot building, we now have the chance to literally show people from a bird’s eye view how big this project really is, and I think it helps put the story in perspective,” she said.

The use of drones is getting increasingly common among local news channels and private people at the same time, raising ethical issues.

To discuss about the ethical perspectives of using drones and how important it is for an operator to get training before using a drone, Schmidt and Will Sentowski, photographer and drone operator at WBAY-TV, answered questions about how small-markets can use drones to tell better stories.

Sentowski, photographer and drone operator of WBAY-TV in Green Bay answered questions attended a drone training in June held in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison.

Q: You got your first license to operate drones. How is your experience with it so far?

A: So far, so good…save for one kind of expensive crash. Although it takes awhile to do all your pre-flight checking for safety, once airborne, the drone provides some beautiful pictures that a proper journalist can use in a multitude of ways. It’s also very fun to fly, but a little on the stressful side so far, since as somewhat of a novice pilot, I’m more worried about safety than video quality. The more I fly, the more comfortable I’ll be with my aircraft.

Q: What kind of ethical issues do you face while using a drone for a story?

A: We professional Part 107 licensees care a great deal about ethics and safety. In today’s polarized times, there are lots of people who oppose drone use by newsgathering agencies without any facts to base their fears upon. It’s up to us to educate the public by using these aircraft responsibly. No hovering right outside somebody’s window to peer inside, and no loitering over a private residence w/o a valid newsgathering reason (for instance, if police are digging up a backyard looking for bodies.) The more that we use these aircraft in a responsible and safe manner, the more the public will hopefully see that there’s nothing to fear or be mad about from a drone in a licensed operator’s control.

Q: As drone journalism gets more popular, is it also increasing ethical problems in terms of using drones in private properties and security restricted areas? How ethics are being followed?

A: Ethics violations of privacy are far more common from hobbyist operators than us Part 107 professionals. Unfortunately, the public often doesn’t know the difference. Many stations, like WBAY, draft policies that are available to the public (and distributed to local law enforcement) detailing our usage of drones, and our commitment to doing so in a safe and ethical manner. And we stick to those policies. As for secure areas, we generally steer clear, but we do maintain the right to fly nearby them but often not over. Some examples would be a local power plant (we could legally fly over the river near it, but not over it) and a local prison (forbidden to fly over it by state law-possibly challenge-able in court, but we’ll err on the side of caution and avoid the area.) Usually, plain old common sense and good judgment get the job done.

Q: Do you own a drone, and if so, how many? How often do you use them? Were there any complaints about using drone, such as violating privacy, disturbing the general public or for security reasons?

A: I only own a couple of toy drones. WBAY owns three: two for newsgathering, and one for our commercial production department. We use them usually at least once a week, and are always seeking out new, but safe, avenues to utilize them. So far, I don’t think we’ve had any complaints from the public, due to the restrained and educated way we deploy our aircraft. Not to say that won’t be the case in the future, though, you never know.

Q: Do you recommend drone training? If yes why? Does it help to be more cautious about ethical issues while using a drone?

A: I heartily recommend drone training from professionals, such as the Poynter workshop we took part in. I don’t think I would have been a worthy pilot had I relied solely on online instruction to pass my Pat 107 exam. We learned so much more than just what answers to put on the test. It definitely made us better, safer operators. I am quite grateful for the opportunity. It really was my launch pad (pardon the pun) into the world of UAS operations. Can’t wait to do even more!

To get more insights of using drone, Schmidt said the days of having a helicopter to send out for aerial views are fading unless you are in the top 30 markets. Having a drone operator allows the reporter, the photographer, even the entire newsroom, to think beyond the story and outside of the box for viewers. In journalism school, you learn the basics of videography and varying shots of tight, medium and wide. Well a drone allows you to go well beyond that and truly tell a complete story that will keep the viewers’ attention.

Q: What are the ethical issues you have confronted so far in terms of using drones in your stories?

A: I haven’t personally run into too many ethical issues when using drone footage for my stories because I typically use it for redevelopment projects or similar-type stories. However, I can certainly see where ethics could play a major role in getting video for a story. I think first and foremost we have to ask ourselves what the drone video will be used for and what it adds to the story. There always needs to be a reason and it has to be a group conversation within your newsroom. For example, if there is a missing child in a wooded area, would a news stations drone help or hinder the search? I think ethics should always be part of the conversation when pertaining to a story, maybe even more so when you are not limited to video on the ground.

Q: Do you recommend training before using drones?

A: Yes, yes and more yes. I think training for drones is vital to the use of the video, both productively and ethically. I think it’s also important because a drone operator should know their rights as well. Just because someone doesn’t want you getting video of their building because it’s been condemned, doesn’t mean you have to pack up and go home. Know where you can legally stand and operate your drone. You also have to be legally licensed to operate one in the news world.

Q: Do people or institutions complain about violating privacy, security concerns or disturbance while operating drones?

A: I have not personally had people or institutions complain about their violation of privacy when using a drone. Again, I am not a drone operator so I am not the one actually getting the video, but I have used drone footage in my daily stories. I think it goes back to the basics and you have to ask yourself: What the video will add, what could it take a way, and do I really need it to tell a complete and factual story? I think people are more familiar with drones than they used to be, but that doesn’t mean you should fly it into someone’s backyard.

I recently did a story about the refurbishing of the Brown County Court House dome and we were able to get really neat shots from up above. We talked so much about its importance to the Green Bay skyline and how the unique copper dome stood out and with the drone, we were actually able to capture those moments for viewers. Video is extremely powerful for viewers and I think by using the drone video in this story, we were able to connect with them on a different level.

Too many young journalists go into high-risk areas without proper safety training, without identifying mentors and without a true plan of what they’re going to do when they arrive, said Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

Shapiro’s message to those young journalists is simple:

“Just don’t. Just stop.”

Shapiro was speaking Feb. 9 on a panel at “Cultures in Conflict: Navigating Culture Difference In International Human Rights Reporting,” a conference hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and The Institute for Regional and International Studies. The Center for Journalism Ethics was a sponsor of the event.

Shapiro, Sheila Coronel, a journalist and co-founder of the Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism and Adriana Fernandez, an independent photojournalist, said journalist safety is an ethical obligation of media organizations and journalists.

In recent years, all three panelists have seen growth in the discussion of journalist safety.

“One of the greatest innovations in journalism over the last decade has been the rise of training that encourages all of us to think strategically and critically and to learn from every close call to improve our own practice,” Shapiro said. “Because we’re not doing our job as journalists if we’re not keeping each other safe.”

Shapiro added that more generally, while physical injuries can be seen by the naked-eye, psychological injuries can be just as, if not more, debilitating to a journalist’s work, mission and career.

According to Shapiro and Coronel, the rise in safety concerns has created an ethical obligation for employers to keep their employees safe.

Coronel observed that threats to women specifically are actually worse in 2018 than they have been previously due to the addition of social media harassment.

This can have a detrimental effect on many female journalists because women may decline assignments for fear of being harassed or threatened.

“For the most part whether its physical, online or sexual harassment, women don’t complain or inform their bosses for fear that they’ll be taken off of their beats or lose their jobs,” she said.

Shapiro noted that the ACOS Alliance, an organization that features a collaboration between news organizations, press freedoms, NGOs and journalists, is just one group committed to taking practical steps to improve the safety of freelance journalists in the field.

Fernandez, an independent freelance journalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, added that “details matter” when covering high-risk areas.

“When you’re covering conflict people don’t always see you with good intentions,” Fernandez said. “Gestures, clothing, language, accent, everything can make a difference.”

Coronel also said that journalists have an ethical responsibility in their reporting to stick closely with the facts, use as neutral language as possible and produce solid work to try and keep themselves safe in high-risk areas.

“Ethical news practice is also highly associated with psychological resilience and safety,” Shapiro said. “If you can look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day, and know why you are there, then no matter how awful the story you’re covering is, if you know why you’re there, your news judgments will be better, your safety judgments are going to be better.”

Read Part 2: Gould’s advice to other journalism instructors, “Teaching students to cover stories that hit close to home.”

It takes a toll.

At first, you try to ignore it.

But then it comes at you so quickly you cannot.

When allegations first surfaced that Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted women here at Michigan State University and the USA Gymnastics team, it was a stunning revelation.

We didn’t talk about it much at first. It was seemingly another crazy story in our newsfeed, the kind we often seem numb to now.

Student media covered it, but with no understanding of the breadth and depth of what was to come.

It was also a difficult story to cover.

Victims weren’t talking.

University officials tight lipped.

Investigators had little to offer.

Getting campus reaction seemed trite, so aside from a few stories here and there, the story didn’t gain that much traction at first.

In early December, before the end of the fall semester, Nassar struck the first of several plea deals and was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges.

The case started to heat up. Our students covered the sentencing—but that led into finals week and off to break they went.

With the start of a new semester, fresh faces came to our journalism classes. Many are learning to be journalists for the first time. Others are delving into advanced storytelling.

Bob Gould, broadcast journalist in-residence at Michigan State University.

As a broadcast journalism instructor, my students were a month away from their first newscast, but Nassar was back in court with another plea, this time a sentencing for sexually assaulting young women.

In a system where victims are rarely identified, a new paradigm emerged. More than a 150 victims came forward, one-by-one, to tell their emotionally charged story in open court, confronting the man who had ruined their lives and took away their innocence.

We discussed the case briefly in class, but because the newscast was a month away, covering this testimony would seem dated by then.

So I ignored it.

But here I was, with the largest story to ever hit my university, my alma mater, my employer, and I was ignoring it.

My thought was to carry on, business as usual. We had a job to do: Educate students and prepare them for life after college. By ignoring it, I hoped it would take their minds off of it. Class would serve as a distraction from what was happening.

But it takes a toll.

Students tell me that they were distracted. Many spending every available minute with necks bent to their iPhones for the latest news.

It triggered emotional responses for those who have experienced sexual assault or harassment.

I realize now that deep down I was in denial. I didn’t want to cover a story that affected our university so greatly. It also meant extra work. This would not be an easy story to do. It starts to overwhelm you.

As the hearing went on, the pit in my stomach grew.

This sentencing went on for a week with local, state and national media focused right here in Lansing, Michigan.

After the third day, I called my teaching colleague Mike Castellucci.

“This is the biggest story you and I will probably ever see at this university,” I told him. “We are doing a disservice to our students, the community and our j-school by not covering this.”

We couldn’t ignore this anymore.

During the court proceedings, peripheral stories start to emerge.

The university president came under fire with calls for her to resign. The Board of Trustees pledged full support of her; the tension on campus escalated with protests and marches. ESPN published a scathing report. It seemed every hour a new story broke.

How would we approach all of this with our students?

Gould’s class watches as classmate and State News editor Rachel Fradette does a live interview on a national network. Photo by Bob Gould.

The State News, the student independent voice newspaper, was doing a great job of staying on top of the story, but it was not as easy for students in our classes.

After hanging up the phone with Mike, we agreed how we’d approach this in class the next day. We started with a discussion and asked questions.

“How are you feeling?”

“What is the emotional temperature?”

“Are you ready to tackle this case as journalists?”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the class completely absorbed themselves into the discussion. If you are an educator, you understand that feeling when you hit on something and you know everyone is paying attention. Phones are off. Laptops are closed. Eyes are tightly focused on you as you facilitate the conversation.

Students watch on TV monitors news of former Michigan State University faculty member Larry Nassar’s sentencing for sexual assault. Photo by Bob Gould.

They wanted to talk and they jumped at the opportunity to tell the story.

We went around the room for story ideas. We decided our first newscast would be a special edition devoted entirely to this case.

The weeklong sentencing came to an end, just as class began for the day. Students gathered quietly staring at CNN’s projected images in our newsroom and hallways waiting anxiously for judge Rosemarie Aquilina to seal his fate.

Within the week, the president and athletic director resigned.

The board appointed an unpopular choice for interim president.

The investigation turned to the football and basketball programs.

Another sentencing – this time in another county – and more victim testimony, including a father, full of emotional rage, who lunged to try and attack Nassar.

Over the course of the hearings, 265 women made statements. More protests, and more calls for the board to resign.

There is certainly no lack of stories to be told.

But it takes a toll.

The entire campus community is struggling to deal with all of this.

“We don’t get to mourn our school like everyone else does because you have a job to do. We must separate ourselves,” said Rachel Fradette, State News editor-in-chief.

Everywhere you go, someone will ask, “What is it like on campus right now?”

When you see other faculty in the hallways, you can’t help but discuss the latest news.

One student told me it’s going to be difficult to graduate in May, leaving the university during all this turmoil.

Fradette said covering this case creates mixed emotions.

“The reporting is doing something very important, but at the same time it’s hard to see the school you care about collapse. There’s some guilt to knowing we had a hand in that.”

It takes a toll.

But we can’t let our students down. They deserve that much from us.

Bob Gould is a 1990 graduate of Michigan State University and is now in his 11^th year teaching broadcast reporting and media law & ethics in the MSU School of Journalism after working 17 years in a television newsroom. He has been honored with more than 40 industry awards, most recently the “Robin F. Garland National Educator Award” from the National Press Photographers Association.

Read what Gould learned from covering a case that was so close to home with student journalists.

Bob Gould, broadcast journalist in-residence at Michigan State University.

Editor’s note: This compilation of teaching tips is a companion piece to the author’s essay on what it was like to teach student journalists to cover events that affected the campus community deeply.

Read Part 1: “Reporting on Nassar: It takes a toll.”

Here’s what I’ve learned from covering this case with student journalists:

• We have to teach students to be compassionate journalists but put away your personal emotions long enough to tell the story. Covering a story that you are personally connected to is not easy, but this isn’t something you can recuse yourself from. One student told me, “It was exciting to cover a story that huge outlets are covering, but it’s so sad and tears at your emotions.”
  

  Rachel Fradette, editor-in-chief, The State News appears on a national network to talk about the campus climate during sentencing of former Michigan State University faculty member Larry Nassar. Photo by Bob Gould.

• We have to facilitate discussion in our class. Make time at least once a week to hear their thoughts, to give them the cathartic, therapeutic feeling. Remember that they often want to talk about this, but do know that this can also trigger emotions, so be mindful of those that may step out of the room.

• Go back to journalism basics. Don’t be afraid to search for the truth.

• Minimize harm. Maximize truth. Hold the powerful accountable. Give a voice to the voiceless. Remember the victims in this case and make sure the students have compassion. Be judicious in how you report victims’ names and show their faces.

• Recommend counseling or support groups that pop up on campus. But merely suggesting isn’t always enough. You may have to bring the counseling to the classroom because often students are afraid to get help.

• Take time in class to do an emotion check. Students are already over-stressed and suffering from anxiety more than ever before. Adding an event like this to their world is tough, but being a good listener helps.

• Work hard to overcome biases. The football team and basketball teams have beloved, well-respected coaches that are now coming under fire. Many are nervous that these coaches will be implicated in the mishandling of sexual assault cases. It can be easy to get caught up in sensationalist headlines, but we must look at this objectively and not immediately jump on the national media hype-wagon, nor should we ignore it completely either.

• Facilitate conversations of what the next story will be and how to cover it. What are the long-term effects? How will enrollment suffer? How are donors and sponsors responding? How will the university alter a culture with systemic, deep-rooted problems?

• Tell students not to give up. As young journalists, they aren’t the first priority of sources returning calls. Don’t let them get discouraged.

• If a student is asked to be a source for local or national media, be cautious, but don’t dismiss it. Rachel Fradette, State News editor-in-chief. has been live on ESPN, CNN and NPR. She discussed their coverage and has given insight to what’s happening on campus. This kind of debrief is OK. Putting personal beliefs and biases into that would be detrimental to the journalist’s credibility. Fradette said she has to completely separate herself from being a student and to fully be a journalist.

• Encourage networking and learning opportunities from national and statewide media. East Lansing isn’t a place where we see national media on a regular basis. Work with them! Many will be happy to mentor young journalists. I have a friend who is a TV photojournalist for CNN. We took students down to the courthouse to meet him and his crew, see his gear and check out the satellite truck. The students loved this. Some professional journalists created a fund to help feed the State News staff during the sentencing.

• Be mindful of reporters who are covering too much testimony. Fradette said the State News developed a rule that if you covered one sentencing, you couldn’t cover a second one and no more than two consecutive days covering the hearing. “Many of the reporters have been covering (this) for about a year, and it’s hit the boiling point.”

• Don’t ignore the story and hope it goes away. Proceed with caution. Don’t discount a story that has the potential to be huge.
  

  Gould’s students meet with the CNN camera crew in Lansing to cover the Larry Nassar criminal case. Photo by Bob Gould.