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Center for Journalism Ethics hosting its spring conference, “Ethics, Urgency & Climate Journalism,” with support from craig newmark philanthropies and the Evjue Foundation

Madison, Wisconsin – The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will host its 14th annual journalism ethics conference at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on Friday, April 28, 2023, in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference is free, open to the public and made possible by generous sponsorships from craig newmark philanthropies and the Evjue Foundation. 

Called “Ethics, Urgency & Climate Journalism,” the conference will bring together news media professionals, non-profit news leaders, media innovators, academics, climate change communicators, students and the public to address the ethical dimensions of covering climate change for our local, state, national and global communities. 

Some argue that journalism still isn’t effectively communicating the scope and scale of the climate change problem. And some barriers to conveying climate change urgency  lie within the field and practices of journalism itself, leaving journalists to question hard-baked professional practices and reimagine their position within existing ethical codes and value systems. 

As media organizations and thought leaders continue to call for new, different and improved coverage, the conference will foster important discussions around three areas of ethical concern: who gets heard on climate change?; what are the structural barriers to conveying scope and urgency?; and what are the many ways forward for journalists and other climate change communicators?  

“In this moment, climate questions feel relentless,” said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics and director of the Center. “The public needs effective and ethical journalism to aid in the search for answers to those critical questions. I’m proud this conference will advance those efforts.”

Expert panelists will take on subjects such as climate reporting, equity and justice, how traditional media structures affect what gets covered and how, the contentious role of advocacy in journalism and more. TIME Magazine climate change reporter Justin Worland will provide a keynote address titled, “Justice and Journalism’s Climate Challenge.” 

The Center for Journalism Ethics, housed in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison, provides an international hub for the examination of the role of professional and personal ethics in the pursuit of fair, accurate and principled journalism. The Center offers resources for journalists, educators, students and the public, including internationally recognized annual conferences exploring key issues in journalism.

The Evjue Foundation is the charitable arm of The Capital Times newspaper. Since its founding in the 1960s, the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $70 million to worthy educational, cultural and charitable organizations in the newspaper’s circulation area. 

craig newmark philanthropies supports groups that seek to defend values such as fairness, opportunity and respect and strengthen American democracy. The organization drives broad civic engagement by working to advance organizations focused on trustworthy journalism and the information ecosystem, voter protection, women in tech, and veterans and military families. Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist. 

Registration is open and available here.

For more information, see the conference web page and/or contact Krista Eastman, administrator at the Center for Journalism Ethics, at krista.eastman@wisc.edu. 

Blake McCoy is a 2022-23 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and a graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

On December 7, award winning journalist and retired NBC News correspondent Pete Williams sat down with UW–Madison Center for Journalism Ethics Director Kathleen Bartzen Culver to discuss his path into journalism and the ethics of reporting on crime and the U.S. Supreme Court. 

“I am puzzled by people who say they don’t know what they’re going to do when they grow up because I’ve always known I wanted to do this,” Williams said.

At just 9 years old, Williams started his own neighborhood newspaper. In high school and while earning his degree at Stanford University, Williams worked in radio. After graduation, he returned to his hometown of Casper, Wyoming. There, he worked as a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio. 

In 1986, Williams joined congressman Dick Cheney’s staff as press secretary and legislative assistant. Two years later, Cheney became Secretary of Defense, and Williams took on the role of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. 

After his time as Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams transitioned back to journalism. Based in Washington D.C., he covered the U.S. Supreme Court and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security for almost 30 years. 

“Maybe it’s just because I’m somebody who likes rules,” Williams said. “But I think the law is fascinating.” 

When asked about his transition from a political appointee at the Department of Defense to working as a reporter for NBC, Williams said he didn’t face ethical obstacles. 

Williams described his role at the Pentagon as an “institutional spokesman” more than a political figure. “When I came to NBC, I had worked at the Department of Defense, so I clearly was not going to cover defense issues,” he said. “It would have been inappropriate for many reasons.” 

“When I went to NBC News,” Williams said, “my job was to be loyal to the National Broadcasting Company, and I didn’t find that a difficult transition to make.” 

L.A.W. 

During his career, Williams reported on many events including the Boston Marathon bombing, the 9/11 attack investigation and the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics, as well as major Supreme Court rulings. 

“I started covering the law when I was still in Wyoming, and I always found it fascinating,” Williams said. “My legal name is Louis Alan Williams. Now think about those initials. So maybe it was predestination, I don’t know.” 

To the audience in the Play Circle at Memorial Union, Williams described the journalistic ethics of reporting on the Supreme Court. He said that the goal of a Supreme Court reporter is to be neutral. 

“Nobody should be able to watch your story on Nightly News or read it on the web and say ‘Aha! He wants that side to win,” Williams said. 

“It’s not hard to maintain that neutrality because the court is built to have two sides,” he said. “You don’t have to go searching for the other point of view. It’s right there.” 

Williams said the reason cases come to the Supreme Court is because they are difficult cases and questions to answer. When covering the court, he said his job was to give equal coverage to both sides of cases without indicating his personal point of view. 

Politicization of the Court

“The Supreme Court does not view its mission as the judicial injustice corrector,” Williams said. “It views its mission as harmonizing the law.” 

When asked if we should be covering more of the Supreme Court and their process, Williams said the selection of what is covered comes at milestones in the cases and depends on the specific issue. For example, Williams said sometimes stories will air when the court grants a case, when the briefs are submitted and when a decision is made. 

When it comes to reporting on the court as an institution in a climate of ever present politicization, Williams said it’s “worth noting” that supreme court justices tend to vote in ways aligned with the president they were appointed by, however that didn’t used to be the case. 

“[Prior to 1985,] it wasn’t true that the people who tended to vote conservatively were all appointed by Republican presidents. Now it is true,” Williams said. 

For those keeping an eye on the Supreme Court term, Williams spoke about the coverage of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Moore v. Harper. 

Williams said the 303 Creative case is difficult to cover because the Supreme Court has twice passed on the issues and because it is not clear yet what legal reasoning for the decision will be. 

He said the question before the court is this: “Can a business owner refuse to serve a same-sex wedding, either because of religious views or free speech views?” and “Is a website design speech?”

In regard to Moore v. Harper, Williams said the case is huge and it’s complicated, but he doesn’t think the court will rule in favor of Moore and the “independent state legislature” theory.

“The extension of that argument is beyond just redistricting, Williams said. “If there’s any dispute over an election, the legislature gets the last word and the state courts have no role here.” 

“I don’t think [the Supreme Court] is going to go for the theory. It didn’t seem to have enough takers,” he said. 

A Career in Stories 

When taking questions from the audience, Williams said some of the most memorable stories he reported on included the 2000 presidential election, historic Supreme Court decisions including the 2008 decision about the Second Amendment, and a story about an FBI agent accused of being a Russian spy. 

When reflecting on the many ethical decisions he’s made throughout his tenure, Williams said he doesn’t think he would change any reporting choices he made. 

“There were mistakes I made, I mean, I’m a human being,” Williams said. “Those are small and, I hope, forgotten.” 

“[Ethical decisions] are the sorts of decisions that, as you know, journalists make all the time,” he said. 

Watch the whole livestream here.

The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.

Erin Gretzinger is a 2022-23 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and an undergraduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

A lawyer who demanded we unpublish a crime story about his client’s criminal history.

A former writer, now on the job hunt, who wanted opinion pieces they wrote over a decade ago removed.

A student whose name had been engraved into a bathroom stall on campus only to see those derogatory comments show up years later in a column still searchable online.

These are just a few examples of requests to remove content that I received as the former editor-in-chief of The Badger Herald, a nonprofit, independent student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. But there were many more requests that kept me up at night. 

According to Unpublishing the News, “unpublishing” is a set of challenges that arise from requests to take down, obscure or change accurate information published by a news organization. 

During my year-long tenure as editor-in-chief, we received more requests to take down articles than I can remember. Some were clear-cut, but most of them had competing ethical implications that felt daunting to tackle as a junior studying journalism (who was just trying to keep our newsroom afloat). 

So I went looking for resources. I searched and searched but, as it turns out, I am far from alone when it comes to unanswered questions about unpublishing – in student and professional newsrooms. 

Deborah Dwyer, a researcher who has studied unpublishing since 2016, knows the issue of unpublishing well – and the media industry’s reluctance to publicly address it.

In a 2018 survey of journalists, Dwyer found nearly 90% of newsrooms had a policy about unpublishing. However, just over half of newsrooms said their policy was not written down or documented. About 18% of newsrooms had a documented policy, but it was only shared internally with staff members. Only a small fraction of newsrooms – 10% of respondents – actually shared their policy with the public. 

“It (unpublishing) was kind of a don’t ask, don’t tell, dirty little secret,” she said.

Conversely, concrete unpublishing policies are a strong desire among the general public. A 2020 survey by Dwyer of U.S. adults found over 80% thought news organizations should have guidelines about what information can be removed from their digital archives.

As most industry leaders grapple with the best ways to address unpublishing behind closed doors, many student journalists are left without a clear model of how to handle difficult unpublishing requests. To further complicate the issue, student newsrooms face additional challenges with unpublishing that professional newsrooms do not have to consider. 

“When it comes to unpublishing, I think the hardest thing is that there is no standard that an advisor or an enterprising student can go (to) online,” said Chris Evans, the former president of the College Media Association. “That’s not particularly helpful to a student journalist who is just learning the trade.

“Unpublishing is not just a journalistic challenge. It’s a leadership challenge – both in the moment and industry-wide.”

The “wicked problem” of unpublishing

The decision to take down or keep a story online can have serious implications for individuals making the requests and the newsrooms who receive them. Unpublishing requests can arise from a number of different concerns, such as privacy, connections to past controversies, threats to reputations or traumatic experiences. 

Dwyer calls unpublishing a “wicked problem” – meaning there are so many different and complex facets to the issue that it seems impossible to solve. 

In her early conversations with newsrooms, Dwyer said many editors thought of unpublishing as an “anathema” to journalism, in which many journalists view themselves as writing the “first draft of history.” But in the digital age, where news does not fade away with the daily paper and audiences have a growing influence over news production decisions, Dwyer said journalists have a responsibility and an imperative to address unpublishing questions.

“This is another way that external actors can influence editorial decisions, and that is uncomfortable for journalists,” Dwyer said. “And it ought to be uncomfortable for us too because if not handled appropriately, it can be a major problem.” 

A lack of guidance and transparency around unpublishing is what led Dwyer to found the Unpublishing the News project – a resource and forum for newsrooms to tackle the question of unpublishing and forge a path forward to creating comprehensive policies. 

Dwyer breaks down unpublishing into two parts: post-publication and pre-publication practices. Most commonly associated with unpublishing, post-production practices include actions such as removing an article, de-indexing a link in a search engine, anonymizing a name or updating content. 

It’s a lot easier for a student to go pull up a document that tells them definitively what to do. There’s a lot of reasons just based on culture, and the nature of student journalism that makes that likely to be the fallback position. But it is likely not the most appropriate when you consider that many unpublishing issues can arise in the type of reporting that happens when people are in school and potentially not thinking about the ramifications of this being out there forever.

Deborah Dwyer

Pre-publication practices refer to steps a news organization takes before an article is online. A large portion of pre-publication considerations focus on crime reporting, including questions about what crimes outlets choose to cover and how reporters follow up on crime stories. For example, the Associated Press announced last summer that they would no longer name suspects in minor crimes.

“It’s rethinking for the digital age some of these things that we have just pulled from the print era into the digital era without giving them a whole lot of thought,” Dwyer said. “Unpublishing requests run the gamut, but a lot of this is primarily focused around crime.”

In her recently published dissertation, Dwyer found college publications actually fare better than their professional counterparts in having unpublishing policies in place. However, college publications were also more likely to have a hardline stance on unpublishing – and the answer is often never.

“It’s a lot easier for a student to go pull up a document that tells them definitively what to do,” Dwyer said. “There’s a lot of reasons just based on culture, and the nature of student journalism that makes that likely to be the fallback position. But it is likely not the most appropriate when you consider that many unpublishing issues can arise in the type of reporting that happens when people are in school and potentially not thinking about the ramifications of this being out there forever.”

Since unpublishing remains a gray area in the professional industry, Dwyer said student journalists likely believe a black-and-white policy is the way professionals handle these questions. In turn, professional organizations – who tend to claim they never unpublish despite internal exceptions – may give students a “false expectation” that they never unpublish stories even though they do.

Student publications face unique unpublishing challenges

Like the professional industry, the pressures of unpublishing on student publications are constantly increasing. Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, has seen inquiries about takedown requests from students increase every year.

“Every news media organization really needs to be prepared for it,” Hiestand said. “It’s just part of doing business these days.”

In addition to being less experienced and resourced than seasoned editors, certain unpublishing issues bubble up in student publications that professionals do not have to grapple with, said Evans, who has been a college newspaper adviser since 2004.  

For example, university and student government officials may attempt to interfere with students’ unpublishing decisions. In an anecdotal experiment that Evans has run with dozens of student journalists, he asks them if they would take down an article if the university president told them to. He estimates that about 80% say yes. 

This imaginary scenario has real-world consequences. Evans recounted one experience where student journalists wrote a negative story about a university employee who immediately launched a “pressure campaign” against the publication to take down the article. Evans said the students eventually removed the story because the employee’s stream of unrelenting emails hurt their recruitment efforts. 

Students also face legal pressure to take down articles. One of the key cases to land in court about unpublishing stemmed from a student publication. Evans said the intimidation alone can be enough to convince students to remove the article. 

The first thing we need to know is, was it lawful when it went up? Did you get the story right? And if that’s the case, we move from the legal side into the ethics side, into the editorial side.

Mike Hiestand

Students should know there is a silver lining on the legal side of this debate. As long as the content was accurate when it was published, Hiestand said there is not much legal standing for lawsuits related to libel or defamation. 

“The first thing we need to know is, was it lawful when it went up? Did you get the story right?” Hiestand said. “And if that’s the case, we move from the legal side into the ethics side, into the editorial side.”

Another quick trick to assuage legal concerns is to check when the article was published. In most states, Hiestand said defamation cases have a statute of limitations of one to three years. 

However, this does not make the ethical deliberations behind unpublishing any easier. 

This is exemplified in another unique challenge for student publications: getting requests from former writers themselves. Former student writers may request to remove an inflammatory opinion piece or story that is hurting their job prospects, or perhaps a now-professional journalist finds an article they wrote in college does not reflect their best work. 

Hiestand, Evans and Dwyer agree that requests from former writers carry complicated implications and questions for student newsrooms. Hiestand noted an additional unintended consequence of strict unpublishing policies: chilled speech among student writers. 

“I would hear students talk about how they were reluctant to write a piece about legalizing marijuana or something like that,” Hiestand said. “They might strongly believe in that, but there was some concern (of) how that might come back to bite them in the butt.”

Steps to take for students

While there are few clear-cut unpublishing decisions – and examples of policies in the professional world are scarce – there are some steps student publications can take to address the daunting issue of unpublishing in their newsrooms. Here is a guide compiled throughout the reporting of this story to help students handle individual requests and create comprehensive policies.

Unlike other journalistic industry standards, Dwyer doubts all newsrooms will come to agreement on unpublishing guidelines – but the key ingredient she thinks every policy needs is transparency. To obtain transparency in unpublishing, Dwyer said newsrooms should have written policies that are accessible to the public. Transparent policies should also explain who in the newsroom decides what content is unpublished and how content is updated or removed.

Dywer notes there are equity considerations with transparency. Without a public policy detailing the process behind unpublishing decisions, it is easy to exacerbate inequities between who does and does not get “digital redemption.”

“Without transparency, we don’t know that it’s only the white attorneys who were friends with the publisher who are getting their DUIs removed, and it’s not the kid who maybe is from the wrong side of the tracks who actually needs that leg-up more.”

Without transparency, we don’t know that it’s only the white attorneys who were friends with the publisher who are getting their DUIs removed, and it’s not the kid who maybe is from the wrong side of the tracks who actually needs that leg-up more.

Deborah Dwyer

Another consideration Dwyer and Hiestand proposed is for news organizations to consider front-end, pre-publication policies based on the news value of leaving certain content online forever. For instance, Dwyer said news organizations could determine that the value of reporting on minor crime is to inform the community and decide that type of content only needs to remain indexed for a year – meaning the article would remain online, but it would be obscured and harder to find based on personal identifiers, such as names.

“By making some of these decisions on the front end about life cycles of content, it allows you to do that to where it’s much more equitable, and you take a lot of the potential bias out of the process,” Dwyer said.  

Hiestand encourages student media to avoid a “one-size-fits-all” policy and weigh various editorial and ethical considerations in their unpublishing decisions. In his view, age is an especially important consideration for students to take into account. He suggests that young people shouldn’t be given a “free pass” for past behavior but perhaps some “breathing room.” 

“If a college kid is busted for underage drinking or something like that, and you put that in your news article, and that can be searched and pulled up 30 to 40 years years later or whatever, you know, how valuable is that? Is that really serving any sort of purpose?” he said.

Evans’ advice for students is to look at the unpublishing policies that already exist and talk with community members – especially those from marginalized groups – about what a good policy would be. 

Evans and Dwyer also recommend students look into how the European Union addresses some of these issues through “Right to Be Forgotten” legislation, which provides private citizens the ability to petition search engines like Google to deoptimize certain parts of their online presence.

Despite the challenges, unpublishing is an issue journalists – especially young ones – cannot shy away from. 

“It’s really thinking these things through on the front-end and being exposed to them, which is why discussion in the professional world and in classrooms is so important – so you have heard of these things before,” Dwyer said. “You didn’t get that first request as a student editor.”

Read and bookmark our guide to creating an unpublishing policy. 

The Center for Journalism Ethics encourages the highest standards in journalism ethics worldwide. We foster vigorous debate about ethical practices in journalism and provide a resource for producers, consumers and students of journalism. Sign up for our quarterly newsletter here.