A video showing two apparent teenagers intentionally driving into a retired police chief riding his bicycle in Las Vegas went viral over the weekend. The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s coverage of the incident was heavily criticized by readers who posted screenshots of the Review-Journal’s obituary for the officer that was published on Aug. 18 for its use of “bike crash” in the headline. Thirteen days later, a source approached the reporter with the now-viral video and the reporter connected the
Author Archives: Support
“More Than A Number” by Justin Baxley is a project aimed at making it easier and more humane for families of homicide victims to engage with local media. Baxley focused on giving the families of crime victims more agency over how quickly and how often a media outlet contacts them (including choosing not to comment at all), ensuring more time to respond to journalists’ questions and having more of a say in how their loved one is portrayed.
One of
For a three-month period in early 2018, child influencer Lil Tay took over the internet. But after going on “Good Morning America” and the drama around who was managing her, Lil Tay’s Instagram went dark in 2018 until Aug. 9 when a statement was posted saying she and her older half-brother had died unexpectedly. “Major media outlets published, and then walked back, stories about the teenager’s [supposed] death. (Her exact age is unclear, as reports have varied over the
One of Norway’s leading newspapers, Verdens Gang, created a “transparency portal” last fall, which includes a list of FAQs about reporting and explains its reporting process to readers. This came after VG was engulfed in a journalism scandal regarding one of the stories it published. “Prior to the scandal, VG leadership was already discussing steps it could take to increase transparency and improve audience trust. But the botched story galvanized the newsroom to examine its standards and ways
“Atomic Fallout” is a joint investigation, done by multiple newsrooms, including The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press, of the St. Louis region’s 75-year history with nuclear waste. The outlets reviewed thousands of documents, many of which were either recently declassified or have never been reviewed. What they found was federal agencies knew about radioactive contamination into soil, groundwater and a creek neighborhood children played in, and downplayed it, likely resulting in rare cancers, autoimmune disorders
For Quill, Julie Scelfo writes about how to cover suicide responsibly. Scelfo references a New York Times article that looked into a website where people shared suicide methods and encouragement. It contained graphic details, specific terminology and the name of the website. The Times included a note about the decision-making process, “Editors decided to identify the site and the preservative used in many of the suicides — as some other news outlets have done — in order to fully
Hours after it was published on Monday, GQ removed an article on media executive David Zaslav from its website following complaints from Warner Bros. Discovery. The story, written by freelance film critic Jason Bailey, recounted a number of moves made by Zaslav that made him “the most hated man in Hollywood.” Shortly after the story was published, the article was edited extensively and was eventually taken off the website. In a statement to Deadline, GQ said it was
The Fourth of July accounted for the most mass shootings of any other day of the year in nearly a decade, a CNN analysis finds. This weekend, several mass shootings took place across the country in Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Texas, and Philadelphia.
When covering mass shootings it is important that journalists follow the SPJ Code of Ethics. Journalists should seek the truth and report it. As information is released from these
The Wall Street Journal published an essay written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, titled “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers,” on June 20. Alito’s essay has been considered an unusual step of “prebutting” a ProPublica article that hadn’t been published yet. The ProPublica article investigates Alito accepting gifts from major GOP donor Paul Singer. The preemptive rebuttal has brought into question the ethics of publishing a defense when the original article hasn’t been published yet.
In an article
Journalists covering traumatic news often have to make difficult decisions, especially when it comes to photographs. Kimina Lyall writes for the Guardian, there are difficult ethical dilemmas that come with trauma reporting. There was a deadly bus crash in Australia that killed 10 people and some of the images that were circulating with the news were taken from the victim’s social media pages without permission.
The SPJ Code of Ethics says that journalists need to “recognize that legal access
Emily Davies, crime and criminal justice reporter for The Washington Post, uses Instagram to follow people from the communities she covers in her stories. Davies used to follow people on her personal account, but she encountered the dilemma of where to draw personal boundaries. She still wanted to let people into her day-to-day life and her process as a reporter, so she created a public Instagram account, @emilydaviesreports.
SPJ’s Code of Ethics says that “ethical journalism means taking responsibility