By Abena Bediako

Journalists don’t need a license to practice journalism. The profession does not fall into the same category as being a doctor or a lawyer. Journalism requires a method, almost scientific in fact.

But one major obstacle often hindering reporters is the internet, where a high volume of misinformation and disinformation circulates. Almost anyone can tweet a picture of a disaster or event and claim it’s credible.

The pressure of being first with breaking news sometimes takes precedence over fact-checking and ensuring the validity of the story “journalists” report on. And all it takes is one person to spread the inaccuracy to gain some real traction.

Before going further, I feel it’s important to distinguish the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is when people intentionally create false or misleading information to make money, have political influence, or maliciously cause trouble or harm. Misinformation is when people share disinformation but don’t realize it’s false or misleading.

 The current war in Ukraine is a great example. BBC Monitoring posted an article on their site, the headline reading, “Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral.” Below the byline is an image of a man who appears to be a wounded soldier. However, upon further examination, the photo derives from a Ukraine TV series titled Contamin. 

The photo comes from the production set taken in December 2020, more than a year before the Ukraine war. Fact-checking goes beyond words. Images and videos require equal scrutiny, but things get difficult when the article and images accumulate 1,000 plus “likes” and retweets, making the story seem credible.

It does not help journalists either when people with political power openly discredit the work of reporters and claim they are solely responsible for spreading lies and inaccuracies.

The media holds a bad rep, especially for those it does not favor. The term “fake news” became extremely popular during the Trump administration. It even went as far as providing inaccurate information about COVID-19 and claimed there was massive fraud during the 2020 election.

Journalists are the watchdogs of democracy, and if people can’t trust news publications to keep them informed on society, who will they turn to?

There is a continuous development of unqualified “reporters” creating blog websites that only serve to spread misinformation. This issue needs to be addressed more.

There is a clear line between tabloid news and actual reporting, but the internet has made some of the lines a bit murky.

In Misinformation and Herd Behavior in Media Markets, written by Bartosz Wilczek, the author states, “tabloids will allocate more attention to political and business misinformation than rival broadsheets. Thereby, they will make the misinformation more publicly available and, therefore, put more pressure on broadsheets to allocate attention to the misinformation as well.”

Publications and media outlets feel pressure to generate more attention. The media lives to serve its audience, therefore they need to find ways to keep them engaged. Some of their tactics show in the speed of a published story or the sensationalism of a story. However, neither of these should take precedence over the truth.

You don’t need a license to practice journalism, but you do need to stick with the journalistic method. Journalists need to be the ones to remind the public what good reporting entails.

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By: Monique Mulima

When I started my master’s in journalism, I was excited to embark on my new career path. Having only been out of school a year, I figured it was a reasonable time to go back, but little did I know, that to some I seemed late.

My classmates were already well-versed in skills like the inverted pyramid, AP style and had connections in the industry, while I was still getting my footing. Although this could sometimes be frustrating, I figured since we were all in the same program, we were still on track to have the same opportunities. But as I began to apply to internships and attend industry panels, I started to realize that many news organizations were not interested in someone without prior journalism experience.

It’s the job seekers paradox, you are supposed to have experience to get a job but can’t get experience without a job. I worried about whether I was already too late to get into journalism, and I wasn’t alone in having these thoughts.

Journalists, particularly those of marginalized backgrounds, have pointed out that companies only seeking people with experience limits the applicant pool by excluding those without industry connections and those who historically made not have had access to the same opportunities.

This was a particularly large online conversation in August 2021 when The Washington Post posted their summer internship applications, which included the requirement for “previous experience in a major newsroom.” People within the journalism industry pointed out how this can be a barrier to many students who do not have connections in the industry to get into a major newsroom or who may live in smaller towns that don’t have major newsrooms.

Journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted “If you are currently a college junior who is looking for a newsroom internship and has already had prior experience working ‘in a major newsroom’ your daddy is probably employed there. Good luck!”

Austin-American Statesman reporter Nicole Foy pointed out on Twitter that The Washington Post isn’t alone in have these requirements. “The thing about everyone dunking on the ‘major newsroom’ part of this tweet is that even local newspapers with like 25 people are this selective despite definitely NOT being the Washington Post,” she wrote.

Following the backlash, The Washington Post did remove this wording from their job requirements, but just because it is no longer listed, it does not mean that they are now actually interviewing people who don’t have that experience.

Teen Vogue Interim Managing Editor Jewel Wicker wrote a Twitter thread about how The Washington Post including this wording in the first place purposely discourages certain students from applying, and how even if those students apply they may just be wasting their time and not be considered anyways. “As someone who works to place interns in newsrooms, this makes me so sad. Every single day this industry shows us they’re not serious about fixing the inequities in journalism,” she wrote.

Oftentimes journalists propose that aspiring journalists get their start in smaller media markets and newsrooms to gain experience. However, these positions are often low paid (if paid at all), and students of marginalized backgrounds may not be able to afford to work for these salaries, especially if it may require relocation.

Another concern with some smaller markets is that a number of these places may not be as welcoming to people of color and LGBTQ+ people. This limits even further how and where marginalized students can gain industry experience. The Nieman Journalism Lab compiled a thread of dozens of tweets of journalists of color’s experience with racism in newsrooms across the country. The Nieman Lab also did research into racism in newsrooms, and found that journalism has a clear racism problem and put together a list of peer-reviewed studies that point to some of these issues.

Even if students can overcome all these barriers and get their start in the industry, it still may not be enough to advance when so many news outlets like The Washington Post will only consider applicants who have worked in larger newsrooms.

Huffington Post politics reporter Liz Skalka tweeted about how this is an industry wide problem. “If you’re pissed off about the Washington Post’s “major newsroom” requirement for interns, wait till you hear how this industry treats people who have spent any significant amount of time in ‘local news,’” she wrote.

If journalism truly wants to reflect the makeup of America and become more equitable, it cannot keep in place the same barriers that have always existed. It has to become more open to people with other experiences like freelance, student newsrooms and non-major newsrooms. Journalism shouldn’t just challenge the status quo in our reporting, we should also do it within our newsrooms.

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by Erik Uebelacker

I was the opinions editor for The DePaulia for the entirety of my senior year. I have dozens of op-eds published under my name, available for the whole world to see with a simple Google search. As a result, my personal beliefs on politics, social issues, world events, etc. can be easily discovered by anybody who is curious.

It’s disheartening that the very stories that it was once my job to write could prevent me from future employment opportunities within the journalism industry.

This certainly isn’t a given. But due to the constantly debated and ever-changing definition of journalistic objectivity, I know I have to prepare myself for this possibility. All journalists should, not necessarily because of a readily available library of opinion stories published under their name, but because of a near-unanimous growth of individuals’ digital footprints that makes it harder to keep their true beliefs secret.

In theory, preferring unbiased journalists to produce objective reporting makes sense. These journalists don’t exist, however. It’s not a profound epiphany to discover that nobody is without personal biases or beliefs, even reporters. In fact, journalists may have even stronger opinions on their areas of coverage than non-reporters, due to the fact that they are constantly speaking to sources and engrossing themselves in their beat.

Walter Lippmann admitted this as far back as 1919 in his famed writing about journalistic objectivity. The American Press Institute later summarized Lippmann’s findings, stating in their objectivity guide that, “The method is objective, not the journalist.”

Under this century-old explanation, my op-eds shouldn’t come back to bite me. If the journalist can’t be truly objective, then having my personal beliefs so easily accessible shouldn’t hinder my reporting potential, so long as the reporting itself is done objectively and truthfully.

That’s still not the reality, though. I’ve heard stories from friends and colleagues about hiring managers scouring their social media accounts and general web presence, making employment decisions based on how much opinion they express online. The New York Times discourages their journalists from sharing beliefs on social media. I can only assume they wouldn’t be happy if their reporters had columns or op-eds out there as well.

These industry leaders know that all reporters, and all people, have biases. I’ve read The American Press Institute’s “The lost meaning of ‘objectivity’” countless times in numerous journalism classes at DePaul. I’m sure other journalism schools require the same. Even so, many in the public and in the industry still expect reporters to operate under this veil of true objectivity that prohibits them from expressing how they truly feel outside of a story.

In this process, I can’t help but feel that some transparency is lost. The American Press Institute calls for “a transparent approach to evidence” in the reporting process. As a young reporter, I’d like to know the beliefs of the journalists behind a story. Shielding those from the public, when we all know that they are there, is not in the best interest of preserving that transparency. This is even more applicable today, as the spread of misinformation is rampant in the world of politics and media, with much of it done anonymously.

After all, it’s not a journalist’s job to be an unbiased person. Their job is to separate those biases from the reporting they do and the stories they share.

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By Kate Linderman

 It’s common to see someone’s mugshot during the crime report on the local evening news. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, I have distinct memories of watching KOLN’s crime reports as a young child — mugshots always displayed. Today I went to KOLN’s website, and it didn’t take long to find another mugshot on their website published just a few hours earlier.

In the last couple years, journalists have asked whether or not it is ethical to publish someone’s mugshot, especially after arrest and prior to conviction. The criminal justice system in the United States uses the presumption of innocence principle, meaning a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty, however, the common news consumer is most likely to associate guilt with the mugshot, depicting the pictured in a more humiliating matter compared to sharing other identifying characteristics such as name, age, physical description, location of alleged offense and/or arrest and any past offenses.

It can be argued that removing mugshots from the media closes a door on transparency and that the public has the right to know who the arrested person is and if they recognize them. While removing a photo provides less context compared to a description, the arrested person is either still detained or, if released, is not considered a threat to the general public.

And these mugshots, whether or not the person is eventually deemed innocent or guilty by the system, have a lasting effect years later. The Marshall Project published an article discussing this issue back in 2020. The author, Keri Blakinger, had a personal connection.

“In 2010, I was arrested with heroin and still sitting in jail when my own “faces of meth”-style mugshot began spreading across the internet, from the Huffington Post to Gawker to the Ithaca Journal,” she wrote. “I didn’t like it; I was struggling with drug addiction and the entire internet seemed to be making fun of my appearance. But I didn’t fault the news organizations. I knew I’d screwed up, and mugshots seemed like an unchangeable part of the media landscape.”

Since Blakinger’s arrest in 2010, the then “unchangeable” standard for publishing mugshots has changed at some publications including The Houston Chronicle during Blakinger’s time as an employee. The Associated Press did not entirely stop publishing mugshots, but they no longer release mugshots and suspect names in minor crime stories.

The practice of publishing mugshots is old, yet the ethical discussion around them is new and more media outlets may change this once-traditional standard. It is something Blakinger, once the subject of a published mug shot, would applaud.

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By Josephine Stratman

One day last August, I was reporting on a shooting in an auto shop in Hunts Point, in the Bronx. A tow truck driver had been fatally shot in a gunfight after an angry teen customer, unhappy that his car wasn’t fixed and he had to pay a deductible, instigated a gunfight. The teen was charged with manslaughter.

I went to the scene the day after the shooting, hoping to track down witnesses and find more information about the victim’s family and the victim himself.

The article we already had online detailed the gunfight, along with some more context: The victim had just been charged with a fatal hit and run.

I expected to just catch some workers who might give me a vague quote about the victim or confirm a picture — basic information another reporter had already obtained. To my surprise, the first person I found at the auto shop was the victim’s brother.

I introduced myself and expressed my condolences. But as soon as the brother heard what outlet I was with, he completely shut me down.

The brother said another reporter from my outlet who had been there the day before messed up coverage of the shooting, misquoting one auto shop worker and making the victim “out to be something he’s not.”

“That’s not who he was… they made it look like karma,” he told me. “His kids are gonna have to see that for the rest of their lives.” He felt his brother had been misrepresented and inaccurately portrayed by my outlet’s reporting.

He was angry. I talked him down and apologized on behalf of the outlet if there had been any inaccuracies. I asked him to explain the supposed misquote, telling him the only way to get a different side of his brother’s story out there would be for him to share it.

The brother stayed adamant, telling me he couldn’t trust us — couldn’t trust me — after the last article.

As journalists, we have to be aware that our interactions with people are impactful beyond just us. Often, when we report on local or community issues, our sources have never spoken to a reporter. Our everyday is sometimes their once-in-a-lifetime.

And that means our responsibility to the truth applies not just our articles but to our interactions.

In the situation in the Bronx, I’m not sure if there’s a clear right or wrong. Did the other reporter misquote the auto shop worker? I can’t know for sure. It’s possible; mistakes happen.

It’s also possible that the brother was simply hurting from the loss of his brother and lashing out at me as a representative member of the media, who didn’t portray his brother in the most flattering light.

Regardless, the point stands: Mistakes matter. It’s perhaps the most basic rule of journalism. Inaccurate reporting harms reputations, outlets’ credibility and can even put public safety at risk. A 24-hour news cycle and constant competitive pressure can increase the likelihood of mistakes.

Fifty-five percent of Americans say careless reporting is a major factor behind significant mistakes in news stories, according to Poynter. Forty-four percent say they stem from a desire to mislead the public. They also point to ill-intentioned reasons, like the fast pace of breaking news.

Factual errors reinforce the public’s distrust of the media. They heighten the sense that journalism isn’t for public service but personal gain. Over and over, I’ve heard the same sentiment: Reporters don’t care about us, they just want page views and a front-page story.

That day in August, I circled the block and grabbed lunch to give the victim’s brother some time to cool off. After, I went back to the auto shop to try one more time, to ask the brother point blank what was supposedly inaccurate in our story. But he had left.

Mistakes matter not just because they’re factually incorrect, but because they erode the public trust, making it less likely they’ll stick around when we try to correct them.

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By Grace Ulch

I am a coward.

When people were hopping fences, I was taking the long way around. As kids zipped down the mini fire pole at playgrounds my second foot was cemented to the jungle gym. Friends would shout from their bike ahead, “look, no hands!” I would shudder at the thought of legs and arms covered in scrapes from lost balance.

I wish I could say this got better with age but my fear of getting myself into trouble just changed forms. Instead of cuts and bruises I now fear irritated neighbors or miffed bosses at countless customer service jobs (even if they irked me first).

As I spend more time reporting it dawns on me how ironic it is that a self-proclaimed coward chose a profession that above all else, other than accuracy, requires bravery.

When insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, Sarah Wire of the L.A. Times never let her notebook leave her hand.

She took many risks that day. Despite having an 18-month-old in the middle of a pandemic she “leaped” at the chance to cover the counting of electoral college votes for the 2020 Presidential Election. Before anyone could comprehend the magnitude of the riots, there were rumblings of a protest. Wire’s husband feared it could turn dangerous.

Through the distribution of escape hoods and cracks that sounded like gunshots splitting through the air Wire turned to Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) and asked, “Can I do the hardest part of my job and ask you what you are thinking right now?”

Editor at Nieman Storyboard, Jacqui Banaszynski says journalists become immune to the heightened emotions because this job requires a person who will race to be the first on the front lines rather than sit back.

“The job demands that you quit stewing and go in search of answers. Anxiety funnels to a point of clear action,” wrote Banaszynski.

Many didn’t expect the lootings and riots on Chicago’s own streets in the summer of 2020. Again, dangerous for many reasons. People knew exponentially less about Covid, and a vaccine had yet to be approved for administration. So, anyone present; young, old, activist, police officer, reporter was putting themselves in harms way.

This was combined with what would result from the anguish felt by Black and Brown people as they continue to battle against racial tension across the nation brought to a crescendo when a Black man named George Floyd was killed by a police officer.

In the thick of an emotional movement journalists needed to be the ones running towards the proverbial burning building, standing side by side with the movement’s most influential players and asking them their why.

The job is to tell the public what is regardless of the what ifs.

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By: Lawrence Kreymer

There seems to be a growing problem in sports journalism, namely reporting something first rather than getting it 100 percent right. It’s a trend that has seemingly been growing in the past couple of months.

A few weeks ago, for example, Adam Schefter – ESPN’s lead NFL reporter – wrote on Twitter and in an article that quarterback Tom Brady was going to retire. As more information started to trickle in, Schefter’s reporting on that day proved to be inaccurate.

Brady did announce his retirement a couple of days later, but multiple people in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ organization and Brady’s agent disputed Schefter’s original reporting.

This has also been an issue locally in the past several months. A report surfaced from Patch.com in November that Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy would be getting fired after Thanksgiving.

Several days later, however, that reporting was also proven to be false. There have been other instances both in Chicago and around the country where sports journalists rush to report a story without confirming that the information is accurate.

Ethics have to matter in sports journalism. It shouldn’t be about who gets the scoop first or who can send out a tweet before someone else. It should be about verifying the information and making it sure it’s 100 percent accurate before publishing that story.

Plain and simple.

There seems to be some sort of competition between reporters who cover the same sport about beating your competition to the scoop. That is wrong. Journalism is not about one individual reporter, it’s about informing the public.

As someone who has always been interested in becoming a sports journalist, it is concerning that the field has become more about clicks and retweets over accurate and fair reporting.

That’s not to say that every sports journalist or outlet is engaging in this type of journalism. The Washington Post has done extensive reporting on the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and on some of its coaches.

The Athletic helped uncover a major investigation into the Chicago Blackhawks where a former player alleged that a coach sexually abused him in 2010.

This type of reporting matters. It makes a difference and shines a light on the issues facing different sports leagues and organizations.

But the sad reality is that more retweets and likes are generated from a tweet about Brady retiring or the Bears possibly firing Nagy than an investigation into the NWSL or the Blackhawks. That’s part of the business, with more people gravitating towards flashier headlines than to more serious articles.

That, however, doesn’t mean reporters should neglect the Code of Ethics to get a story out first. We have an obligation to give our readers the truth and a story that will inform them about a particular subject. If we do make a mistake, it’s also our obligation to make sure to correct that error and explain it to our readers.

ESPN never published an article explaining Schefter’s reporting, leaving a cloud of uncertainty hanging in the air for a couple of days until Brady made his own announcement.

Readers deserve to know the truth. It doesn’t matter if someone is doing political reporting or sports reporting, we all follow the same rules. Let’s be better and more careful when a breaking news story happens to not rush to print right away.

This is a field that I want to enter out of college and be successful at for a long time. It does worry me, however, that there is this unrelenting pressure – especially by larger sports outlets – to always be first rather than being right.

If there’s anything I have learned in my journalism classes at DePaul, it’s that being right is more important than being first. We lose our credibility if we report something false, and when you start to lose your credibility, the public doesn’t trust you nearly as much.

I’m thankful that DePaul has taught me that and stressed the importance of being right in my reporting. I just wish that more professional journalists recognized that and stopped rushing to Twitter to beat out another reporter.