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Interactive storytelling reflects both new opportunities and new challenges for 21st century journalism

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As is often the case each year in the last days of December, many retrospectives and lists are  being published this week.  We are treated to summaries, galleries, lists, and “the year in” stories.

Yesterday NewYorkTimes.com published a collection titled “2013: The Year in Interactive Storytelling.”  The lengthy post offers a portfolio that includes examples of multimedia stories, data visualization, explanatory graphics, breaking news, and visual and interactive features.

nyt1One can easily spend hours with this body of work.  To review it is to see both opportunities and challenges for journalists.  With entirely new ways of telling stories, we likely will face new ethical questions.  A review of these examples from the New York Times offer both examples of strong interactive work as well as inspiration for anticipating the evolving ethical challenges journalists face as we try to keep up with technology.

From frosty Madison, Wisconsin (currently enjoying snow and a temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit), the staff of the Center for Journalism Ethics wishes you a very successful, productive and ethical new year.

View the New York Times’ 2013 interactive storytelling portfolio here.

+++Updated 12.31.2013 2:30CST+++

Writing on Groundswell, Josh Stearns (the journalism and public media campaign director at Free Press) offers his list of the best interactive storytelling for 2013.

As I created my 2013 list however, I saw much more data journalism and an increasing use of tools that engaged readers or rethought the basic flow of storytelling for a more participatory audience.

Read Stearns’ entire post here.

For 60 Minutes, a dubious honor for a journalistic failure that won’t go away quietly as Poynter lists the best and worst media errors for 2013

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Anyone having a passing acquaintance with current events probably knows that CBS News and its  iconic program 60 Minutes have had a rough year.  To further add to a year the network would like to forget, 60 Minutes’ Benghazi debacle has been named by the Poynter Institute as the “2013 Error of the Year.”

Writing for Poynter, Craig Silverman notes that it wasn’t just the fact that 60 Minutes, arguably the most respected television news magazine, got duped that won them this dubious honor.  As problematic, it only took other news organizations a few days to take the story apart and expose significant flaws.

CBS News was not alone.  Silverman goes on to list many other notable errors and corrections (some disturbing; others amusing).  Read the entire article here.

Nieman Lab: What will journalism look like in 2014?

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The folks at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab have rounded up several opinions regarding what we can expect for journalism in the coming year:

“To close out 2013, we asked some of the smartest people we know to predict what 2014 will bring for the future of journalism. Here’s what they had to say.”

The series, which has been updating daily, concludes Friday, December 20.  Read the many entries here.

Poynter: “Newtown’s media blackout forces journalists to do their jobs”

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Writing for Poynter.org’s New Ethics of Journalism page, Kelly McBride examines how the  self-imposed media blackout among the residents of  Newtown, Conn., has impacted media reporting of the first anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The citizens of Newtown, Conn., and the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims have drawn a hard boundary around their homes.  No media, they’ve said to the outside world. Don’t talk to the media, they’ve said to the 28,000 people who live in the community.

In doing so, they’ve deprived newsrooms of the easy visuals and rote storytelling that have sometimes substituted for meaningful journalism. And that’s good: It forces journalists to do the hard work they should be doing on the first anniversary of the mass shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six adults.

In a way, it’s a gift to the audience everywhere that Newtown is spurning public events. Without requisite sights and sounds such as flickering candles, tolling bells, and names read aloud, journalists have to do something other than tap into the grief and rehash the horror of that day.

Read the entire article here.

High school student journalist addresses fairness and ethics concerns of Kansas City TV News report

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Professional journalists take note:  High school students are paying attention to journalism ethics issues, and they aren’t afraid to point out possible lapses.

The student news site for Anderson County High School in Garnett KS, located about 75 miles southwest of Kansas City, took to its opinion page today to question the balance of reporting on a story aired on KCTV5 News last month.  Student journalist Anastasia Shriber, writing for the Bulldog Barker, quotes the SPJ Code of Ethics while suggesting the TV station’s initial reporting fell short in providing the school administration’s side of a story involving the suspension of an eight grade male student for carrying a purse.

One issue central to the opinion piece is whether the station tried hard enough to get both sides of the story.

SPJ’s code of ethics states: “test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.” Based on Dave Jordan’s first broadcast the only side reported was Davis’ and his mother. Jordan claims to have “went above and beyond to get a response” from the school district’s position. “It’s pretty clear the district, the school, and the individuals involved all knew we were trying to speak with them, and they avoided us,” said Jordan, “That’s unfortunate, but it happens, and in this case, it happened because they chose not to contact us.” Not mentioned by Jordan was the fact that the contact they made was not received until 5:30p.m. and the annual ACHS Fall Sports Award night started at 7p.m.

There is likely more to this story that can be gathered from this single student op-ed and search of the station’s web archives.  Still, it is refreshing to see that high school journalism students are aware of and trying to operate under the SPJ Code of Ethics and that they expect the same of professional journalists.

Viewed through the idealism of student journalists, it comes down to fairness, as is indicated in the op-ed’s last graph.

A lot of people rely on the news for the information they can’t procure firsthand; therefore it’s the direct responsibility of the news station to report with honesty and integrity. The information presented in the article misrepresented the situation and individuals involved, creating tension between the close-knit community of Anderson County and students directly involved with the suspention (sic).

Read the student news site’s op-ed here.

KCTV5″s original story was posted on November 6, and was updated on December 6 (though no indications are readily apparent regarding what exactly was updated). Read KCTV5’s story here.

Report first, ask questions later: The trouble with viral stories

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“It has to be true.  I read it on the Internet.”

How many times have you heard someone say that, or said it yourself?  Most always, this phrase is used in jest as a satirical or sarcastic was of casting doubt on something with dubious credibility.  Yet  stories go viral with great speed and little apparent fact-checking on sites that otherwise present themselves as credible news organizations.

Ravi Somaiya and Leslie Kaufman, writing for The New York Times, take a look at how the race to be first (and thus gain the most traffic) often comes at the expense of being factual.

Their creators describe them essentially as online performance art, never intended to be taken as fact. But to the media outlets that published them, they represented the lightning-in-a-bottle brew of emotion and entertainment that attracts readers and brings in lucrative advertising dollars.

When the tales turned out to be phony, the modest hand-wringing that ensued was accompanied by an admission that viral trumps verified — and that little will be done about it as long as the clicks keep coming. “You are seeing news organizations say, ‘If it is happening on the Internet that’s our beat,’ ” said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “The next step of figuring out whether it happened in real life is up to someone else.”

Read the entire article here.

Updated at 2pm 12.10.2013 to include…

Read a different take from Matthew Ingram at GigaOm here.

National Code of Ethics to heighten standards of Myanmar journalism

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From International Media Support (www.i-m-s.dk):

The Interim Press Council of Myanmar and International Media Support (IMS) are to work together to obtain a national consensus around a common Code of Ethics for Myanmar journalists.

The agreement signed between the two parties as part of the project ‘Capacity Building of Myanmar Journalists on Ethical Journalism” commits them to conduct a countrywide consultative process with all relevant media stakeholders in order to establish a unified Code of Conduct for journalists.

Read the entire article  here.

More about International Media Support can be found here.

Release of Newtown 911 recordings leads to difficult ethical decisions for news organizations

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News executives were making some tough decisions yesterday with the release of calls made to 911 during last year’s school shooting in Newtown, CT.  The calls were released after a court ruled in favor of several Freedom of Information Act requests.

Even before the recordings were released, ethicists were offering guidelines for how the audio should (or should not) be used by the media.

Harry Bruinius, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, sets forth what he terms a classic ethical dilemma:

On the one side are civic values seen as the essence of a free, self-governing people: The government must be transparent; a free press must be able to hold public officials accountable for their actions; and the greater good is served when those with governing power are not allowed to unilaterally control the flow of information.

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Yet when this information causes pain for victims and their families – especially in the case of the Newtown shootings, in which 20 first-grade children and six adults were gunned down – many ethicists take issue with the priority of these civic values. To cause such palpable pain and to lay bare the personal anguish of victims for all the world to see, many ethicists argue, violate basic ideas about how we should treat one another.

At Adweek.com, Sam Thielman notes leading television news organizations mostly chose to exercise extreme caution.

NBC was the first to say it out loud: “The families of the victims of the Newtown, Conn. shootings made it public that they did not want the 911 tapes to be released,” NBC News president Deborah Turness told staff this morning in a memo shared with press. “Unless there is any compelling editorial reason to play the tapes, I would like to respect their wishes.” The network subsequently decided not to air the recordings. CNN, too, said it would be circumspect and review the audio carefully, and ABC News told Adweek immediately that it would not use the audio at all.

CNN chose to air some portions of the audio, but also covered the ethical issue. Reporting for CNN.com, Brian Stelter and Michael Pearson note that the network’s own legal analyst criticized the decision.

The network’s report, preceded by anchor Jake Tapper’s warning of disturbing content, also included a call from a teacher who had been shot in the foot and one from a janitor who relayed information between police and dispatchers.   Immediately after the airing, a CNN legal analyst said the decision to air the recordings was wrong.  “Other than pure titillation, I don’t see any public interest served by this whatsoever,” Mark Geragos said.

Read the complete articles here:  Christian Science Monitor  •  Adweek.com  •  CNN.com

Photo credit: Michelle McLoughlin/Reuters via linked Christian Science Monitor article

 

 

Can a social media brand known for re-tweetable lists, cute animal gifs and hoaxes also be a credible news organization? Buzzfeed thinks it can.

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David Folkenflik, NPR’s media correspondent, reports on Buzzfeed’s plans to build a team of journalists charged with offering original news reporting.  Ben Smith, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief says the site competes with all kinds of media when it comes to sharing news.

Kelly McBride, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, suggests that the goal for virality may blur the real story.

“What does it mean when something goes viral on BuzzFeed?” she asks. “Does it mean that it’s the most important topic on its face? Or is there another issue behind it?”

Read and/or listen to the entire story here.

Guardian editor testifies before Parliament about Snowden leaks, tells of government intimidation tactics

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The New York Times reports on Alan Rusbridger’s testimony before Parliament yesterday.  Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, discussed the government’s efforts at prior restraint as well as official intimidation.  During the proceedings, Rusbridger found his own patriotism called into question.

“At one point during the hearing, Mr. Rusbridger was asked, to his evident surprise, whether he loved his country. He answered yes, noting that he valued its democracy and free press.”

Read the complete New York Times article by Ravi Samaiya here.

Read The Guardian’s own coverage by Nick Hopkins and Matthew Taylor here.