Innocent until proven guilty? By Jennifer Nazha

dmoseley Student Perspectives

 

By now you’ve probably seen the face of Marilou Danley, the girlfriend of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, plastered across various media platforms. On Tuesday, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department addressed the media naming Danley a “person of interest” in the investigation of the attack her former boyfriend carried out Sunday, leaving 58 people dead and hundreds wounded on the Las Vegas Strip.

Whether or not Danley knew anything about Paddock’s plans to commit a mass murder still remains unclear. In fact, she was out of the country when the attack took place. Danley had been in the Philippines from Monday, Sept. 25 until Tuesday night when she arrived in Los Angeles from Manila, according to Antonette Mangrobang, a spokeswoman for the Philippine Immigration Bureau.

According to the New York Times, “person of interest” is a loose term that does not necessarily specify that the person is suspected of committing a crime. This is the problem. At this point in the investigation, Marilou Danley has not been charged with any crime; therefore, she is innocent until proven guilty.

So, how should we as reporters approach a situation like this? Do we call a person of interest’s character into question by plastering their face all over the news, potentially depicting them as a suspect or criminal? Or do we wait until they are charged with a crime?

Marilou Danley could be guilty, but she very well could be innocent. It is not the media’s job to decide that or put that idea in the minds of the public. However, it is the media’s job to think ethically about how this is going to affect her, especially if she truly did not have any part in this horrific act.

So many times, people are brought into a narrative that they never asked to be a part of, and so many times, we act before we think. As journalists, we must realize that our actions affect the lives of others. Unless we are sure, then we should not run a story that could ruin someone’s reputation.

If she is innocent, every time a google search is done on her, her face is still going to be tied to this terrible incident. Every time she goes out to the grocery store, people will look at her differently. People are now going to remember her as Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend. That is her new reputation.

On the other hand, if she is guilty, well maybe it does not matter now that we released her photos and information because it was bound to happen anyway, but how can we be so sure to act before we actually know.

This is a big story with many moving parts. It is understandable that people want to know everything that is going on, but we cannot paint people to be one way or the other. It is not the media’s job to decide whether someone is guilty or innocent.

It is the media’s job to report the facts. That very well could have been done without releasing her pictures. We must be sensitive to the lives of others because one mistake on our part could have lasting repercussions.

 

 

Reporting Tragedy: Remembering Respect and Ethics By Madeline Happold

dmoseley Student Perspectives

 

Sometimes tragedy is inescapable.

Like hurricanes Maria and Irma that decimated Puerto Rico, leaving thousands homeless and without power. Or, more recently, the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas that resulted in 58 dead and over 500 injured. As reporters, we are often thrown into these situations to deal with the aftermath  — the tears, the bloodshed and the stories.

 

But when people are most in need, how do we stretch out our arms only to hold a microphone? Reporting on these events can be seen as spreading crucial news to the public, but can also be seen as insensitive towards others when most vulnerable.

 

[Embed video of CNN coverage here]

 

Take CNN’s recent coverage of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. During a live interview, a Houston mother criticized CNN reporter Rosa Flores and her coverage of the aftermath after being questioned about current conditions following the storm.

 

“People[s] are really breaking down and ya’ll sitting here with cameras and microphones trying to ask what… is wrong with us,” the woman responded.

 

The newscast quickly cut from the interview as Flores calmly apologized to the woman. CNN later issued a statement saying “The people of Houston are going through a very difficult time… Our reporter handled the situation graciously.”

 

In these circumstances, people are exposed and hurting. Journalists cannot disregard these emotions when reporting. We must balance the line between respect for people’s current position and asking often uncomfortable questions. As journalists, we must understand that sources hold the rights to their experiences and should avoid pushing people for the sake of a story.

 

Reporting tragedy is a journalists responsibility, though, especially when the events have a larger impact on the surrounding community and public. According to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics, reporters should show compassion, avoid lurid details and recognize that gathering information can initially cause harm or discomfort to others. SPJ also notes that stories involving victims and grief should work to minimize harm and treat “sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.”

 

 

Yet, do reporters have a moral responsibility to be actively involved with aid? Only when a source is in direct harm. For example, photojournalist Kevin Carter sparked controversy after snapping an image of a starving Sudanese girl being stalked by a vulture for the New York Times. The 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo resulted in the questioning of Carter’s journalistic ethics after he watched the pair for twenty minutes, waiting for the best shot.

When reporting tragedies, we are journalists first and citizens second. Our initial impulse may be to drop the pen, set down the camera and help, but remembering the reason for our being in these situations should remain forefront  — to capture history through storytelling.

 

Thus by sharing these stories journalism can begin to shape itself as a means of respectful social activism. We can only hope that through our coverage these stories will touch a larger audience, acting as a catalyst for compassion, support and change.

 

 

Detachment and Compassion in Reporting by Liz Vlahos

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

Detachment and Compassion in Reporting

by Liz Vlahos

As journalists, we have it drummed into our heads from day one that we have to approach everything we cover with an objective eye. It’s a cardinal rule, as sacrosanct to our profession as the Hippocratic Oath to the medical field. This is especially important with “fake news” having become a major point of contention this past year; to show any type of personal bias in any story covered calls into question our objectivity and our ability to do our jobs effectively. As journalists, we are expected to detach ourselves from the subject matter as much as humanly possible, and also to recognize when our personal biases may impact our ability to tell the story in question.

With the words, “as much as humanly possible,” however, a question comes to mind: How much detachment from the subject matter is too much?

In our business, the chances of covering feel-good news all the time are zero; no matter where we find work, bad things will happen that we will be expected to cover. These include the following:

By no means is the above an exhaustive list.

A certain degree of detachment is healthy and necessary in covering these types of stories, for failure to do so can be detrimental not only to a reporter’s ability to effectively tell the story, but also to his or her well-being. At what point, however, does detachment become a liability rather than an asset?

It can be argued that engaging those we interview on a personal level is bad practice, for it could potentially compromise our objectivity in reporting. It could also be argued that making our interview subjects comfortable enough to talk could garner us more information for our stories.  In addition, an argument could be presented that being too cold and detached could discourage an interview subject from cooperating. These perspectives on their own, however, come across as excessively utilitarian and neglect one simple truth.

The people we interview are not simply sources of information. Any person we interview in these circumstances could be profoundly affected by the events that transpired, and for a reporter to blindly bombard that person with question after question can cause significant trauma. A key tenet of the SPJ Code of Ethics is to minimize harm, of which the second sub-tenet specifically states to show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage. Mining the parent of a murdered child for information as if you were doing a data dive on that person shows a blatant lack of compassion that could also be considered cruelty from the perspective of the bereaved. We cannot allow ourselves to become so detached from what we’re covering that we treat those affected as a check in the box rather than as human beings who are, at that moment, reeling and hurting from what has transpired. If we cannot bring ourselves to care about what has happened, let alone show compassion to those affected, we really shouldn’t be there.

We need to find the delicate balance between detachment and compassion. This balance is necessary in order for us to effectively do our jobs and to do right by those whose lives were torn asunder by the events we are sent to cover.

Should journalists be human?  

dmoseley Student Perspectives


The role of objectivity in the wake of tragedy
Brendan Pedersen

Right before I went to bed early Monday morning, my brain dimly registered a news alert from the Associated Press: in Nevada, a Clark County hospital was reporting “multiple injuries” from a country music festival. When my eyes opened a few hours later, I saw numbers: 50+ dead, 400+ wounded, and the second-time news organizations were able to use the phrase “worst mass shooting on American soil” in just over a year. Frankly, between the roles of journalist and citizen, I do not know how to handle the massacre in Las Vegas.

Keeping opinion out of my journalistic writing has always required a lot of effort, but it felt like a duty I was bound to uphold for the sake of my news reporting and most of my magazine writing – even though the latter allows for some flexibility here and there. I’m a political science student, and that tends to invite the urge to argue, to craft narrative around evidence that turns into a claim or point. But mainstream journalism has long been expected to retain a shred of impartiality so that it can view the world it studies objectively. Subscribing to a single argument or belief system can belittle an organization to claims of bias in the eyes of the public, damaging its ability to reach citizens on both sides of the aisle and establish a basis for civil discourse.

However, since the 2016 election and in the midst of the Trump presidency, plenty of political norms have been beaten to a pulp. Perhaps the most jarring has been the newfound scrutiny on the idea of “objectivity” in journalism – specifically on its relevance. For example, when Trump officially renounced his former conviction that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, the New York Times ran a front page “analysis” breaking down the then-candidate’s long history of hypocrisy and contradiction. We in the journalism world know that analysis is often code for opinion, and the Times’s choice to give theirs such a priority didn’t go unnoticed by media commentators.

But for many, Trump represented a uniquely existential threat to democracy, to the press, and to people of color, and that threat was worth calling out. Trump – the man and administration – has somehow become transcendent of normal politics. How far does that change reach? Has the way we talk about politics changed forever? The discussion around gun violence has been the definition of American politics as usual for decades now, and the media has often done its due diligence to get both sides of that debate recognized. Does a new, blood-stained high score challenge that norm? Should it?

In 2016, following the massacre in Orlando, the Boston Globe decided that it had reached the threshold of its moral outrage. It combined its newsroom with its opinion office and, despite misgivings from both teams, together they churned out an entire print issue dedicated to gun violence analysis and statistics a few days after the tragedy. It sent 8,000 tweets and 10,000 emails out to its readers, asking them to petition their representatives for meaningful change, amounting to what feels like a cardinal sin in the religion of journalistic objectivity.

As a journalist, I’ve written as objectively as I can about gun violence on the local and national level in the past. As a human being, the senselessness and brutality of it shakes me to my core every time. It is my conviction that gun violence is a public health concern of the highest order, but I don’t know if I can argue on behalf of solutions – even admit those beliefs — to my readers and hope to retain their trust. At the same time, as someone who believes that journalism is a career rooted first and foremost in public service, I also don’t know if I can look at myself in the mirror while relying on what has become a false equivalency – liberty for lives – pretending that I believe the gun violence is an inevitability in this country, or that the forces that have entrenched it are immovable. They are not.  ####

Facebook Evicts Fake News

dmoseley Uncategorized

The social media giant is taking the fight to fake news, but will their reforms harm balanced reporting?

By Dan Beedie

 

Propagandists poisoned the information pool during the 2016 election, and it all took place on social media. Many stories and posts on sites like Twitter and Facebook maliciously attacked candidates, politicians and public figures. The line between what was fake and factual had become blurred.

 

So, how do we combat this scourge of fake news on social media?

 

The question is becoming increasingly more relevant, and Facebook believes they have the answer.

 

Last December, Facebook announced a multi-part plan to combat fake news. Under the proposed plan, the social media site would allow third party fact checkers, such as Politifact and FactCheck.org, to diagnose stories that may be inaccurate. Then the ‘Facebook Journalism Project’ was introduced in January of this year. Among other benefits, the project intends to train the public on how to find and identify reliable news sources.

 

“I recognize we have a greater responsibility than just building technology that information flows through,” said Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, noting the demand for more aggressive news policies on his website.

 

Due to the reforms, Facebook acknowledges that it is greatly responsible for a large portion of consumption and distribution of media, and this should be celebrated. However, journalists and the public should not be so eager to hand over the power of deciding what is or is not truthful to a social media site.

 

Let’s not forget, just last year Facebook faced ethical scrutiny for keeping popular conservative news off the ‘Trending News’ sidebar. Those who present the truth must hold a standard of being fair and balanced, and Facebook’s track record hasn’t appeared to meet those standards.

 

Also, for Facebook, getting people to their site to communicate amongst themselves will always be a higher priority than providing factual information. While social media sites and news outlets function in order to make a profit, newspapers and TV news programs are in the fact-providing business, and social media sites are in the public engagement business.

 

Facebook’s campaign against fake news is still in its early stages, but more questions need to be answered. Will Facebook’s fact checkers ask for reporters to release sources to determine their credibility? What about private conversations, will those be fact checked as well? Who, if anyone, will serve as a check against Facebook’s powers to censor news material?

 

Social media sites need to take action against fake news. It is troubling to think that intentionally false news sites affected our election process. However, a pinch of skepticism is necessary when discussing Facebook’s future role in the fact providing business.

 

Lets not give Zuckerberg the keys to the car just yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to be a war correspondent? Lessons learned by the Center’s Danielle Church

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

My Talk with NBC Correspondent Stephanie Gosk: the good, the bad and the ugly side of journalism

by Danielle Church

Ever since I’ve been in college, two words have followed me: war reporting.

The first time I ever saw them is when I wrote a research paper for an English class just to understand more about what war reporting really is; the second was when I met a man while working at a hotel in Chicago who led reporters around the Middle East; and now, I had the chance to actually interview someone who was, at one point in her life, a war reporter.

Stephanie Gosk is a national correspondent for NBC News. She has covered everything from the Flint water crisis to Laquan McDonald’s death in Chicago to the war in Iraq.

While Gosk was in Baghdad, her mother – an elementary school teacher – was driving home from work in the states. She was listening to the radio when they started to play the audio of an American kid in his late 20s, who had been kidnapped, being beheaded in Baghdad. Knowing that her daughter was there, Gosk’s mother immediately pulled to the side of the road where she began to shake and cry.

She wouldn’t tell Gosk that story until years later though.

“I felt terrible about it,” Gosk said. “I really did and the trouble is…the tricky thing for family and friends is that they watch the stories that you do in places like that and the stories just by nature show the worst images of that moment. I mean it honestly looks like it’s a constant running gun battle and the truth is that it’s not as dangerous as it looks on T.V.”

That doesn’t mean gruesome events don’t happen while covering wars though and according to Gosk, it certainly does exert some guilt knowing that as a reporter, you’re only there for a short time and get to eventually go home, while people who live there can’t escape the war zone. She said there were a couple of years in Iraq where there were three to four car bombings a day, but her team was able to help a lot of the Iraqi’s.

“We did actually help them, a lot of Iraqi’s that we worked with ended up coming to the U.S.,” Gosk said. “We had translators that we worked with that became our friends and colleagues.”

The best way for war reporters to deal with the guilt is by helping those around them and by doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

“You try to do your job as best as you can and make sure that you tell their stories as accurately and fully as you can so people understand,” Gosk said.

Above all, Gosk reminded me of the importance of always providing a human element to the story. While she was overseas, she said one of the hardest things to do was not get caught up in which media organization was in the most dangerous spot and would potentially get the only shot.

“Sometimes because you’re so caught up in it, you’re not telling that human story,” Gosk said. “So, it certainly was developing a sensitivity to that and explaining on a human level what it was like to be there as opposed to ‘they shot, the other guy shot back, they moved forward,’ that kind of stuff. Instead of just that play-by-play to make sure you convey that humanity and sometimes you don’t think about doing it when you’re in that environment.”

Whether in a war zone or in the United States though, Gosk says one of the worst parts about being a journalist is talking to a person who just lost someone in a tragic way. It’s not the first time I’ve been told this. I once had a conversation with WGN-TV’s Marcella Raymond who has covered crime for years, and she explained to me how it still doesn’t get easier for her despite the fact she’s been doing the job for so long and now only works a few days a week.

I’ve thought about this a lot because as a 21-year-old, I can’t imagine having to walk up to a person’s doorstep that just lost someone they loved in such a terrible way. It’s part of the job though and based on all the advice I’ve received from Gosk and Raymond as well as my professors at DePaul, the best way to handle it is to just be a human in that moment.

It’s our job as reporters to show people respect and be a human, it’s not just for the sake of our stories but for the sake of our sources who just lost someone dear to them and who deserve to be treated as human beings – they aren’t just a quote for the story.

I’ve especially learned this having to interview a sexual assault survivor and a disabled person for the first time this year. In those situations, I’ve felt I’ve truly been able to apply the advice I’ve received from my mentors to handle the situation in the best way possible.

In the end, the sexual assault survivor told me I did a good job of making her feel comfortable despite the fact she and I had conversations back and forth about doing the interview because it would be filmed for a broadcast segment.

I felt like I had done my job correctly and I was able to tell an important story, especially from my source’s point of view. Although I have never been in a war zone, these are the types of situations that prepare me for the difficult interviews I will eventually have.

Between running around to get the best sources, long hours, deadlines that loom over your head and stories that almost never go the way you expect them to, journalism is most certainly not a glamorous industry. It’s not just about the byline that gets put in the newspaper or on the website, and it’s most certainly not about the glitz and glam people might think T.V. is all cracked up to be. There’s so much more work in it than that.

It’s about telling stories, informing the public about the things that really matter. However, to say that journalists don’t receive anything great out of being a reporter would be a complete lie, and Gosk sums it up perfectly.

“One of the great things about doing this job is it gives you an incredible perspective on life,” Gosk said. “You’re constantly being exposed to people in different places, going through a variety of different challenges and that allows you to appreciate your own life in a different way. And then a very close second to that, (journalism) is such a dynamic job, you’re constantly learning new things, you’re going to new places, that, to me, continues to be a thrill…that to me is still exciting and I can’t imagine that I’ll reach a point when it’s not.”

As a student I haven’t traveled quite as much as Gosk has, but I certainly can relate because stories have brought me to different parts of Chicago I might otherwise have never visited. Gosk couldn’t me more right – for any journalist that is truly passionate about what they’re doing, there are a multitude of perspectives on all the things happening around us in this world, and I can’t think of a better way to see them firsthand than by being a journalist, war reporter or not.

 

A Sunday Morning Maestro

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

What I learned from Rand Morrison in 13 minutes and 53 seconds

By Deni Kamper

 

Rand Morrison has one of those resumes that makes budding young journalists utter obscenities of amazement under their breath. 10 Emmys, two George Foster Peabody Awards and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards. He’s produced everything from the crime-solving newsmagazine “48 Hours” to “Century of Country,” a 13-part series on the history of country music. These days, Morrison serves as the fearless, yet unimposing, leader of “CBS Sunday Morning”. In terms of career achievement, life experience and even temperament, Rand Morrison and I have just about nothing in common. But while I was picking – or more accurately – nervously fumbling around his brain, he said something unexpectedly honest. In response to the cliché question, ‘Why did you become a journalist?,’ Morrison didn’t give me a watered down response about the search for the truth, a love of writing or even the joy of telling stories. He said, without skipping a beat, “I have a relatively short attention span, I love learning about new things and finding out about stuff that I never knew before…” This wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering response, but I was startled by how earnestly I related to this admission. In many ways, journalism is a terrible career choice. The hours are absurd, the pay is dismal and the stress is constant. But if you’re like Rand Morrison, and dare I say, myself, you make these sacrifices for the privilege of a never-ending opportunity to learn about the world.

Morrison has undeniably conquered the art and the business of journalism. Serving as the executive producer of “CBS Sunday Morning,” he has reached what many would consider the gold standard of journalism: telling the stories you want to tell. To many outside the profession, this probably sounds more like a job description than an ultimate goal. But any rookie – and in some cases veteran – reporter will tell you that robberies and farmer’s markets aren’t going to cover themselves. Reaching that coveted level in the field of journalism is no easy feat and is not a sure thing for any reporter. This fact is not lost on Morrison who admits (selfishly, in his words) being able to do the stories he wants to do is his favorite part of the job. His advice for all of us twenty-somethings toiling away in college newsrooms and studios is to work hard, be patient, and keep an open mind. But most importantly, he believes in dreaming big. This last piece of wisdom may sound like the central theme to a corny children’s book, but it’s coming from a journalist who once hung up the phone on then-presidential-candidate Jimmy Carter because he was rushing to cover an airline crash at O’Hare Airport. Morrison laughs as he recalls this particular day which sticks out in his mind even decades later. At the time, he had no way of knowing where his career would take him and although one can always hope for the best outcome, hope will only take a person so far in this business. In the words of Rand Morrison, “…you need to be driven and dedicated and you need to dream big.”

 

 

Reporting—and words—matter

dmoseley Student Perspectives

NBC’s Harry Smith stresses human element of reporting

By Brenden Moore

Since breaking into the news business more than 40 years ago, NBC News correspondent Harry Smith has interviewed multiple presidents, covered the toppling of governments, reported from war zones and everything in between.

But it is a 1987 story about 18 Mexican migrants found dead in a boxcar near the Texas-Mexican border that stays with him to this day.

Smith, then a young CBS reporter, went to Mexico and talked with the family members of the deceased, putting a human face to lives that otherwise would have been forgotten.

“We went to the area in Mexico where these people came from and we met their brothers and sisters, their moms and wives,” Smith said. “The moms talked about the money their sons sent back. The wives said we no longer have a dirt floor, we have wood on the floor here. And we have a refrigerator. They’re actual human beings who will do the work no other Americans will do.”

Smith spent 25 years at CBS before jumping over to NBC in 2011. Though the boxcar story was very early in his tenure at the former, Smith said it still resonates with him today and perhaps shows an important aspect that can easily be lost in the daily grind of journalism: the human element.

Indeed, Smith has made a career of listening to regular people and telling the stories of their lives, something he believes is more essential than ever following an election where many journalists misjudged the mood of the country and downplayed President Donald Trump’s chances of winning.

“One of the things that happened in this election cycle was that we as media were not doing a very good job of listening to the country,” Smith said. “We were paying a lot of attention to the candidates. We were not paying attention to the actual human beings.”

Smith was among the few mainstream media members who believed Trump had a legitimate chance. Why? “Because I get out of the office,” he said. “It’s just the truth.”

“The difference is really made when you get on a plane or drive your car, go someplace and look at somebody face-to-face and hear what they have to say,” Smith said.

Though Smith mostly does feature stories nowadays, he still tries to read newspapers for at least two hours every morning to keep up with what’s going on.

“I still want to be ready. I want to be prepared. I think of the things that I’ve learned through this whole process is preparation is really key,” Smith said. “When you go out that door to do that story, you’d better be armed with as much homework as humanly possible before you get there, so you know which questions to ask, where the pitfalls are, what’s at stake. To me, that’s what it’s really about.”

Smith said that no matter if one is covering Donald Trump (Smith believes the media still hasn’t figured out how to cover the president) or the local zoning board meeting, journalists must take the assignment seriously as “people are invested.”

“The jobs you’ll often get to start will not be great, or they’ll feel like they’re not great. And … if you go to work for a small television station or a local newspaper, you get sent to the zoning board meeting. And if you think that’s a death sentence, then you should quit.”

And, of course, Smith said not to forget the human element.

“It goes back to the beginning of the conversation, if we go there with open eyes and open ears and an open mind, we might be amazed with the story we come back with,” Smith said.