Editors meet to discuss how to hold ethics standards high in the face
Ceppos, dean of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a former fellow in media ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
EVERYONE KNOWS THE PITFALLS OF PUTTING the content of mainstream newspapers on the Internet: Reader-generated content doesn't always meet our standards. Updating constantly for the Web can lead to errors. Carefully thought-out decisions on play in the print product may fly into the ether on the Internet.
Those indeed are issues, a group of print and online editors, ethics experts and others agreed at the ASNE-sponsored conference "Tangled Web: The Ethics of Newspapers Online." But the participants found many more layers of dilemmas than those obvious issues, layers spawned by the rapidly changing nature of the Web and by a lack of standards for this moving target.
The contraction of newsrooms and the demands of the Web sparked one of the most contentious arguments: How many eyes need to read a story?
"If your standards become low because you just want to get it up there, you will eventually lose your entire audience," said Melissa McCoy, deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times.
"I think realistically … there's absolutely no financial incentive for us to have as many layers of eyes on stories as there used to be," shot back Jonathan Krim, assistant managing editor/local of Washingtonpost.com.
"What I'm saying is that instead of having a copy editor and an assigning editor and then a slot … no newspaper Web site has the number of layers of editing that a newspaper has. As we look at contraction, we probably have to look at the level of care" that we formerly exercised.
The group also worried about standards for the use of video, a subject that was new for most of the participants and for most of their newsrooms, too. Especially controversial was the practice of re-creating situations to provide video for stories that already have run in print - a practice that has occurred on several newspaper sites.
"I don't think we've created protocols in our newsrooms," said Kelly McBride of The Poynter Institute, who moderated the session. "We've always had faked photographs … but we've also had decision-making models that indicated to us that this is distortion."
Some people shooting video "have not learned the history of the craft or the ethics," said Robert Hernandez, senior news producer of The Seattle Times. "We're new to that game."
Conference organizer David Boardman, executive editor of The Seattle Times and chair of ASNE's Ethics and Values Committee, said that while some mainstream newspaper editors have asked for "online dos and don'ts," this conference illustrated that the Web is changing too quickly for a simple set of rules.
Rather, Boardman said, the challenge is in learning how to retain and protect the fundamental values of the profession - what he called "our greatest capital in this increasingly crowded marketplace" - while opening our hearts, minds and Web pages to the new, more interactive reality.
McBride agreed, pointing out that rules don't "live that long." "Giving them a tool that will help them create whatever systems in their newsroom probably is as good as we're going to get at this point."
The lack of such tools became a theme. "You don't let this broader content just happen," said Michael Arrieta-Walden, managing editor for online of The Oregonian, Portland. "Be clear about the processes you're going to have for handling that and for displaying that."
For example, the issue of user-generated content - comments appended to stories, news reported by readers - has provoked study in the past. But, as with almost every existing controversy about the Web, the "Tangled Web" group dug deeper and found even more problems.
A San Francisco Chronicle columnist, writing about the homeless, invited readers to send in their own pictures: "Chronicle readers often write us about scenes on the street or vagrants camping out in front of their homes. If you see something you think would make a good photo, shoot it and send it."
The Chronicle did not end up publishing any such photos. But the group wondered if pictures would have violated the privacy of the homeless. Or even could have been verified for accuracy.
Among many other issues, the group identified these additional problems:
- How much content do newspapers create on the Web, and how much should they just pass along?
- When do we link to other sites?
- What does journalistic independence look like online?
- How does audience behavior inform our online journalism? What is the relationship between traffic and content?
- How does technology change the relationship between business development and content?
- How do we remain transparent?
- How do we manage the tension between what we do in print and what we do online?
- When is point of view valuable?
- How do we correct our mistakes?
- How do we use social networking?
- What's our obligation to use the Web to enhance democracy?
Work obviously remains if we're to come up with the protocols that Kelly McBride mentioned. Neil Brown, incoming chair of the Ethics and Values Committee, vows to continue to work on a code of ethics or other devices.
"We live in a world where a particular headline word may be chosen not based on editorial judgment but on its ability to generate ad impressions on a particular Web page, for example," Brown explained. "Meanwhile, newspaper blogs often feature posts that are inaccurate or lack credibility and yet generate traffic - and potential revenue needed for coverage that does meet traditional standards."
The initial "Tangled Web" group met at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. ASNE, Poynter, the Markkula Center and the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California sponsored the session.
The Los Angeles Times' McCoy summed up the pitfalls of our fluid situation: "The more technologically advanced we become, the more opportunities we have to screw it up."