journalistic ethics

Ethics Dunce: Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Hang on, Rod...that phone call is coming any minute now....

Apparently to remind us that it too, like CNN and MSNBC, applies cynical and insulting standards when deciding what its audience will regard as trustworthy commentary, Fox News has announced that it is hiring former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as a contributor during the 2012 election cycle. Sanford was forced to resign after he shamelessly used his office as a means to conduct a long-distance adulterous romance with his South American fire-cracker soul-mate, going AWOL while supposedly doing his state’s business and lying about it in the process. Is this as bad as what Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York governor whom CNN deemed an appropriate hire as a the star of one of its prime time programs, did to end his political career? No. Is it still irresponsible?

Oh yes: Continue reading →

Patrick B. Pexton: Worst Ombudsman Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Interestingly, you can find Patrick B. Pexton's picture in the dictionary under both "bad ombudsman" and "bad hair."

Well, at least we know that the Washington Post’s new ombudsman, Patrick B. Pexton (who apparently escaped from a Charles Dickens novel) is a dud. That’s one good thing that came out of his column about his employer’s unethical coverage of the “Niggerhead” rock, otherwise known as “Let’s smear that scary Republican, Rick Perry, so he’ll never come close to being President.” Other than that useful but unfortunate fact, however, Pexton’s piece represents the most incompetent and ethically clueless analysis by a media ombudsman that I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of them.

Pexton, who is supposed to present an objective and critical response to ethical issues in Post reporting and editing, instead adopts the stance of its partisan defender. Wrong. That’s not his job. His job is to keep his paper honest and to reinforce stringent journalistic ethical standards. Continue reading →

Why Lawrence O’Donnell’s Interview With Herman Cain Wasn’t Unethical Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Lawrence O’Donnell’s unconscionable roast of GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain —-no fair journalist would call it an “interview”—made me realize that broadcast journalism ethics have fractured to the point where it is unfair to apply the same ethics standards to different networks and programs. My initial reaction to seeing O’Donnell’s over-the-top performance was that it represented a new low in broadcast journalism interview ethics. Now I think that is unrealistic and unfair. O’Donnell’s conduct was what MSNBC’s audiences want to see, and what critics should expect to see. Herman Cain, the target in this case, consented to the abuse. Where’s the unethical journalism? There was no journalism. Continue reading →

Hank Williams, Jr.: Victim of a Political Correctness Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Wait---Hank Williams Jr. thinks Obama is like Jennifer Aniston?

On the Fox News morning couch-fest, country singer Hank Williams, Jr. had this exchange with the hosts:

HANK WILLIAMS: Remember the golf game?

    STEVE DOOCY: Boehner?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That was one of the biggest political mistakes ever.

    CO-HOSTS: Why?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That turned a lot of people off. You know, watching, you know, it just didn’t go over.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: You mean when John Boehner played golf with President Obama?

    HANK WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah! Yeah. And Biden and Kasich, yeah. Uh-huh.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: What did you not like about it? It seems to be a really pivotal moment for you.

    HANK WILLIAMS: Come on. Come on. It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?

It wasn’t OK, apparently. Headlines sprouted up like weeds claiming that Williams had “compared Obama to Hitler,” or “said Obama was like Hitler.” So because ESPN figured much of its audience would think that Hank Williams compared the President to Adolf Hitler, since the media was reporting his words that way, ESPN, that paragon of courage, fired Williams as the voice of Monday Night Football. No longer will his song introduce the festivities. Continue reading →

The Washington Post, Rick Perry, and “Niggerhead”: A Confirmation Bias Conundrum

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I'm bending over backwards trying to be fair about this...

The Washington Post splashed a strange front page story across its paper face on Sunday. I have no idea what to make of it, because I am trying as hard as I can to be objective, and the story repels objectivity like my cousin repels women. It is shot through with confirmation bias: what you think of it is hard to separate from what you already believe.

It appears that Rick Perry, early in his career (when he was a Democrat), used to host events at a hunting camp where there was a large boulder that had the word “Niggerhead” painted on it. Ranchers called the camp by that name—-once a common one for rock formations and creeks in Texas and other parts of the country—long before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. Perry’s father leased the property in 1983, and according to Perry, the first thing he did was to paint over the word on the rock.  Perry says that when he first saw the rock, it was already painted over. But the Post found seven individuals who say they remember seeing the name on the rock during the time when Perry’s father’s name was on the lease. Apparently the old name is still visible through the paint. Eventually, Perry’s family paid to have the boulder flipped over so it couldn’t be read. Meanwhile, the Post says,  “Longtime hunters, cowboys and ranchers said this particular place was known by that name as long as they could remember, and still is.”

What are we supposed to take away from all this? Continue reading →

The Dubious Ethics of Andy Rooney

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A few words about the trustworthiness of Andy Rooney...and CBS News

“60 Minutes” curmudgeon Andy Rooney makes his cranky farewell this week, and the CBS newsmagazine can be expected to make a big deal over his retirement; after all, Rooney is the network’s last remaining link to the halcyon days of Edward R. Murrow. In his blog, journalist Paul McNamara recalls an encounter with Rooney 20 years ago that provides some insight into the regard a broadcast icon has for the truth, and perhaps the culture of news reporting at CBS.

McNamara, you see, was working at a newspaper that ran a syndicated Rooney column, and one day he discovered that one of the columns Rooney filed included his eye-witness report of something that occurred after he wrote the piece… Rooney had intentionally fabricated a scene he never saw. It was a minor misrepresentation in the context of the column, but a misrepresentation nonetheless. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Author Karen Hunter

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In a jaw-dropping example of naked bias, dishonesty, and Bizarro World journalistic ethics, African-American author Karen Hunter complained on MSNBC that the Associated Press was racist by transcribing President Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus without restoring his intentionally dropped dropped G’s, as other services—unethically—did.

Here’s part of the AP version:

“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”

Hunter said the AP’s version was “inherently racist.” Continue reading →

Can a Lying Journalist Be a Trustworthy Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Stephen Glass: Would you trust this man?

When New Republic Editor Charles Lane fired Stephen Glass, the infamous journalist for that and other magazines who in 1998 was exposed as having fabricated many articles he had represented as true, he was quoted as saying,  “Glass is a man without honor who operated out of hostility and contempt; he has no place in journalism.”

Now the question is whether such man now has a place in the law.

A petition for review has been filed by the California Commission of Bar Examiners contesting the  State Bar Court’s finding that Glass is now morally fit to practice law. He passed the California bar exam in 2007, but the committee blocked his admission, finding that his previous record of professional dishonesty, though in another profession, showed such a deficiency of character that it disqualified him from legal practice as unfit. Then a hearing judge over-ruled the Commission, and found that Glass had reformed sufficiently to render trustworthy. The opinion was upheld 2-1 by the State Bar Court. Continue reading →

If Fox Will Fake A Headline, What Else Will It Lie About?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As part of its coverage of the NFL opener for the Chicago Bears, Fox Sports wanted to use as graphics some news media headlines from last season that questioned Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s courage and guts in the NFC Championship game, when he left the field with an injury that some felt Cutler should have played through.  It couldn’t find any such headlines, however because there weren’t any. No problem: Fox just had its crack graphics department make some up.

Fox flashed three newspaper headlines across the screen:

Cutler Leaves With Injury
Cutler Lacks Courage
Cutler’s No Leader

Fox announcer Daryl Johnston then told viewers that “these are the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago.” But one of those local papers, the Tribune, decided to check. There were no “actual headlines” like those, in Chicago, or anywhere else. Caught in an outright misrepresentation, Fox Sports came clean, sort of. Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s Hypocrite Who Doesn’t Understand Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple says he really, really believes that it is bad journalism to write about the pre-marital sex of public figures, particularly before they were public figures. After all, 1) it’s nobody’s business and 2) it’s an invasion of privacy. But Wemple wrote this week that he makes an exception to that rule when hypocrisy is involved. Thus it is OK for Sarah Palin’s slimy biographical hit-man Joe McGinnis to dish about rumors of her dalliances before she was wed, because, Wemple says, in a 2006 Eagle Forum questionnaire, Palin indicated that she supported funding abstinence-until-marriage education programs and opposed teaching sex-education programs. This makes her a hypocrite, he claims, so journalists quoting McGinnis’s invasion of privacy and violations decency is fine and dandy with him.

Wemple is wrong once, twice, three ways:

1. What Palin says years after her pre-marital sexual exploits, assuming there were any, can’t possibly make her a hypocrite. It is not hypocritical for a mature and experienced adult to decide that her conduct in the past was mistaken, unwise and risky, and to advocate policies that discourage it in others. Condemning someone for learning from mistakes and trying to craft public policy based on acquired wisdom is the mark of a fool. Continue reading →