crossposted from huffingtonpost.com
Here's the deal, folks - recently, the Poynter Institute held a conference regarding the restoration of journalistic ethics. They're a real big deal in professional journalism, so I helped 'em, modestly, some funding, significant social media stuff.
Me, I just want news I can trust.
Sure, I'm not in the news industry, and have no idea how to fix the problem. However, maybe we can get a good start regarding what might be the worst of ethical abuses.
Right now, "objectivity" in news means that sometimes, to pretend objectivity, a news org will bring on two sides of a story. They'll be fully aware that one participant will lie to the public. (I'm not talking about gray areas; there're lots of black-and-white clear situations.)
Similarly, news orgs will present a speaker who will lie to the public, and the interviewer will say something about "leaving it there" instead of challenging the speaker. This is what Jon Stewart calls the "CNN leaves it there" problem.
Such efforts are clearly deceptive, but not (yet) called out in the Society of Professional Journalists ethics code as bad behavior.
One step toward trustworthy news would be to declare that kind of thing unethical.
Next step would be for people in the public, people who don't want to be lied to any more, to bring light to such situations.
Might this help? Hard to say, it's sure no fix, but maybe a good start?
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