Keegan Kyle is a senior studying journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
AS HORROR UNFOLDED AT VIRGINIA Tech April 16, media industries clearly saw a new breaking news world in front of them. Print news cycles were irrelevant and broadcasters weighed video from non-journalists holed up in campus buildings. The heady media mix included cell phones, chat sessions and online networking communities.
The old world met the new world in a single moment of tragedy.
With the luxury of old-world timing, NBC spent more than seven hours deciding whether to air a brutal video mailed to them by gunman Seung Hui Cho.
In this new world, online teams at organizations like CNN and The Washington Post had just minutes, perhaps seconds, to decide whether to follow suit.
In that moment, Virginia Tech crystallized a central question of the changing media landscape: what will breaking online coverage do to our ethics?
“I strongly dispute the premise that the Internet is going to lower our standards as journalists,” says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla., who nonetheless recognizes the pressure of new cycles. “The expectancy of the audience to have it in that format is there. It’s no longer acceptable to publish when we’re good and ready.” Time was traditionally on newspapers’ side in upholding the principles of journalism, but the Internet has placed more pressure on reporters and newsroom ethics. While acknowledging the greater potential for error, McBride is confident newspapers have been and will remain steadfast.
Newspaper coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings was a “good example of all of us behaving pretty well, the print industry,” said Carole Tarrant, editor of The Roanoke (Va.) Times. Tarrant says delaying online posts while clearing up uncertainties is worthwhile because reputation matters more than ever in local breaking news situations.
For newspapers across the country, the ethical challenges of online reporting require a responsibility to prepare and communicate. Complex challenges cannot be solved through simple guidelines, McBride notes, but rather a strategy for making decisions and a workforce that is knowledgeable of those processes.
Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, says it is important to apply the same level of ethical standards to Web and print but also realize that the mediums are different. Much of the Web team at the Post used to work in the print newsroom, which helps bridge communication between the two operations. “We still have a strict policy about putting anything on the site,” he says. “We have not gone down the road of feeling desperate.”
Independent reporters, such as “citizen journalists” or bloggers, can place more pressure on newspapers to post updated reports. Tarrant said The Roanoke Times took a “think local” approach during its discussions on coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. “In a situation like this, it’s not about competition,” she said. “It’s the sum of your coverage that’s more important.”
Although breaking a new development can help Web traffic initially, inaccuracies or negligence can damage a newspaper’s long-term reputation. Bob Steele, The Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, also warns editors not to bite the bait of competition. Shortcuts to the editing and reporting process, he says, can undermine accuracy and fairness, producing a larger number of mistakes and corrections.
“That’s happened before with television or radio covering the Columbine shootings, for instance,” Steele says. “Anytime you are scrambling to tell a story, there’s a danger of hurting accuracy.”
The Roanoke Times first acknowledged the Virginia Tech shootings in an e-mail to subscribers of a breaking news feed. Blog-style reporting followed on the newspaper’s Web site, adding pieces to a large puzzle. “You get the full picture when you read everything, but you don’t report everything you hear,” Tarrant says.
The Roanoke Times was cautious about reporting uncertainties because errors can attract a local backlash quickly. “You have a different obligation when it’s a local event,” Tarrant says. “[National media] will pack up and leave when it’s all over.”
Organizations are finding that along with their traditional competition, they’re up against some information disseminators that do not adhere to high journalistic standards, including bloggers. In response, some newspapers like The Washington Post have adopted a policy of greater online transparency. Through blogs and online forums, journalists post unverified claims and allow readers to evaluate the source’s credibility. “You should at least acknowledge you know something,” Brady says.
Transparency is something of a conundrum to Sue Robinson, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies newspapers and cyberspace. She says allowing readers to judge sources and to understand the news process is a good thing. “You start letting people in on your hidden production strategies. … The gatekeeping role is sort of diminished in that way. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, but it does have ethical implications.”
Warnings and caveats – such as, “This page may contain graphic material unsuitable for children” – doesn’t necessarily justify online content. “The problem I think sometimes is that newspapers are not fully understanding the technology before they use it. We’re just doing things because we have the ability,” Robinson says.
Advancements in graphics software and the increased use of high-speed Internet by Americans have encouraged newspapers – and other news organizations – to beef up Web operations. With such expanded capabilities, McBride cautions newspapers to uphold three aspects of transparency: Tell what you know, where you got it and what you don’t know. McBride says explaining what you don’t know is one of the most important considerations in Web ethics because readers will otherwise make assumptions.
It’s also critical reporters do not make assumptions about the validity of sources in breaking news situations, Steele notes. Eyewitnesses can be unpredictably incorrect, and even police are caught up in the event. “Sometimes with breaking news stories there can be false details,” he says. “Don’t throw accuracy out the window. It’s still important to get it right, even if it means slowing down.”
For Robinson, the Virginia Tech shootings showed a fascinating array of ethical issues in the arena of sources. CNN received “I-Report” video from the cell phone of a student outside Norris Hall, the scene of Cho’s mass killings. Other students offered inside accounts of the shootings to media. News organizations also used the social networking site Facebook to identify some of Cho’s victims.
“It makes sense for journalists to provide a space for [that information],” Robinson says, but she doesn’t know if that’s what readers want to see. “I just feel like we didn’t have the conversation … deep discussions between journalists and the public.”
NBC and newspapers that chose to post the infamous Cho video online were alternately praised and criticized for that ethical decision. Some media and newspapers removed the video from Web sites, but it was already accessible through hundreds of outlets. Such decisions are made more difficult because the online audience is vast and diffuse.
“The people who live on the Internet have a different standard” than readers who use online reports occasionally, Robinson says. “Who do you play for?” Local newspapers have a rooted standard, while the relatively young Internet carries such a wide variety of information to such diverse audiences that the expectation is somewhat blurred.
Both the Poynter Institute and CyberJournalist.net (a blogger’s code) have online guides for ethical decision-making in digital media. The Poynter version – created by a team of online journalists, including McBride, Steele and Brady – suggests editors discuss, compile and revise a set of aspirations specific to their newspaper.
McBride, who works as an ethics consultant for newspapers, says newsrooms already have the tools and the capacity to make good decisions but need an appropriate plan for Web coverage.
Tarrant says The Roanoke Times was prepared for its online coverage because the newspaper had a similar shooting scare several weeks earlier. It tested the new blog format and came across many of the ethical decisions that would later arise during the April 16 shootings.
Tarrant does have advice for newspapers trying to prepare for the next big breaking news event. “Anticipate national media wanting to use you as experts,” she says. The newspaper had to put one reporter in charge of answering all outside requests: “No,” so they would stop calling.
In the thick and stress of breaking news, Steele says, newspapers should rely on the traditional process of principled journalism: reporting, editing and quality control. “We still need editing oversight … even if the Web is a whole different animal,” he says. “Sometimes we accept that mistakes are inevitable … the key for journalists is to keep asking questions to heighten verification.”
That emphasis on verification accompanied the next massive national breaking story to follow Virginia Tech, the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August. The Star Tribune kept its focus on transparency while tracking angles ranging from sabotage to a terrorist act to structural deficiencies. Reporters and editors found themselves in an information swirl that included observation, eyewitnesses, rumor and guess. Reporter Pam Louwagie applied the same principles she had always brought to print reporting.
“In a situation like that, it’s hard to verify a lot of information,” Louwagie says. “I fear sometimes there’s a tendency to get stuff out there right away. I think reporters are concerned the content is credible.” *