Category Archives: Newspaper ethics

Practices vary on newsroom Facebook use

Oct. 23, 20093:26 p.m.

Over the past month or so, I’ve gotten a few emails from readers who said they sent me a “friend request” on Facebook and wondered why I hadn’t accepted it. Two of them pointed out that they are already Facebook friends with a few other Eagle newsroom staffers, and they weren’t sure why there were differences among Eagle news staff in the connections they make on social media networks.

So let me talk a little bit about our social media guidelines as a newsroom, and mine individually.

Earlier this week, the newsroom staff had a great lunchtime discussion about how our personal and professional lives intersect on social media networks. We updated the newsroom’s ethics policy over the summer and added a social media section for the first time, and one thing is already clear — it needs to be more specific to give our staff more guidance in how to use networks like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace without compromising our credibility as a journalists (and, by extension, The Eagle’s).

Earlier this month, Mashable.com quoted a study in which more than half of employers surveyed block social media sites on work computers. At The Eagle, I believe that connecting to these networks, especially within our community, is an increasingly important part of our job. I encourage our staff to be engaged in digital community conversations as part of their job. And to do it with the same sound ethical guidelines we’ve adhered to in the print business for many decades.

The use of social media is evolving so rapidly, though, that stories are abundant of people who have harmed their careers and their employers’ reputations by exercising poor judgment in Tweets, blog posts or Facebook updates. Being a news organization just adds an extra few layers of complication, and we don’t yet have all the answers on how to handle every situation that can arise. Our guidelines and practices will change as we make mistakes, or discover ethical dilemmas we hadn’t anticipated.

In our discussion last week, I told our staff that I won’t issue rules on who they should or should not invite or accept as Facebook friends. Common sense should guide decisions for journalists who use Facebook as a mix of personal friends/family and professional connections. It’s common for journalists to have professional acquaintances connected to them on Facebook. I view it as a great compliment to our staff that readers and sources in the community want to have connections to our staff on social networks — they see our writers, editors, visual journalists, etc., as approachable, or they wouldn’t want to connect to them.

Some of us are, frankly, unsure how far to go in opening the doors of our Facebook pages. We’re figuring it out as we go, and, at least for me, practices change over time as use of the social network grows. It’s not that there are hoards of people banging at my Facebook door by any means. And I don’t have earth-shattering posts on my Facebook page (and I don’t update it often enough — I’m working on it). But I do have family members there, and my vacation photos, and conversations with close friends.

So a month or two ago I decided that I was not going to connect with people on Facebook if I don’t know them. It’s not meant as a slight to anyone. I just consider it something of an extension of my personal space, and I want to make sure that I know who the people are who are stopping by. At the same time, I’m not willing to suggest to Eagle staff members with their practice should be. That needs to be a personal decision. I do, though, ask that they be aware of the implications of people they might accept or invite as friends, and the potential for those connections to reflect on them in their role as a journalist.

Twitter is a much more open space, in my view, and I follow people there whom I have never met in person.

We’ll be working on a more specific social media policy in the coming weeks. If you wonder what other companies — both inside and outside the media business — have established for policies, Mashable points to a great directory of policies at Social Media Governance.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Newspaper ethics, People, Reader issues, Technology, Web/Tech | Comments

Tip on Tiller shooting came from an Eagle editor

June 3, 20095:32 p.m.

One of the most common questions news staff members are asked about a major news story is, “How did you hear about it?”

On most crime stories, the answer is the police scanner, or a police report.

We learned through unusual means last Sunday that George Tiller had been shot, and I think it’s right to disclose to our readers how that happened.

For more than 10 years, Assistant Metro Editor Marcia Werts and her family have attended Reformation Lutheran Church. She was arriving at church Sunday shortly after the shooting occurred, and her husband and daughter were inside the church. She phoned Deputy Editor Tom Shine to alert him to the developing story. Marcia was understandably shaken by what happened at the church that day, and we did not ask her to take part in news coverage, though she did stay in touch with other Eagle editors through the day. Other media organizations also were arriving at the church about the time Marcia arrived, presumably after hearing of a shooting on the police scanner.

It’s rare that one of our staff members is so closely connected to a developing news story. Many people have asked how The Eagle confirmed the news of George Tiller’s death so quickly that morning, and I want to be open with our readers on the circumstances of how this happened.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, Kansas.com, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Reader issues | Comments Off

Election season means barrage of bias claims

Sept. 10, 20088:04 p.m.

I love election season. For all of its flaws, it’s still democracy in action. And a presidential election carries with it the added excitement of history in the making.

It’s also the season for a daily stream of emails I get accusing the newspaper of bias for or against the writer’s favored candidate. Many are emotional and accusatory, built on the absolute certain knowledge that the news staff is laboring to execute an intricate conspiracy.

I take each one seriously. Sometimes, I quickly see how a writer came to his or her conclusion. A word we used may be a little loaded in meaning, or we left out a pertinent fact. Most of the time, these are errors of oversight or failure to anticipate how an article or headline would be perceived by readers. Sometimes, the writer or editor truly has bought too hard into one candidate’s argument, and we have to talk about how to provide better balance. And sometimes, the plain fact is that with so many offices up for election, some races are in danger of slipping through the cracks and not getting enough coverage unless we’re vigilant.

The hardest complaints to resolve, though, are the ones that are based on an unspecific perception the reader has about the intent of the writer. One article last week drew seething responses – and threats to cancel the paper – from two readers. One believed the article was grossly biased toward a liberal viewpoint. The other was equally passionate that The Eagle is “a conservative rage” and this story was another example of our right-wing bias.

The concept of bias is complex – both in its reality (no one can truly have zero beliefs and biases) and in the reader’s passionate perception that bias exists. Often, we see what we want to see or expect to see. It can be hard, when we’re pushed for specifics, to put our finger on the source of the slant we think we see.

One of my naive hopes each election season is for civility in our debate. I love debating ideas and viewpoints with friends and listening to them explain their beliefs. And I continue to be saddened and frustrated by the growing refusal of so many people to debate ideas without attacking people. I’ve had very enlightening discussions with people I respect greatly – I sometimes disagree completely with their view on a subject, but I don’t feel a compulsion to attack them personally, nor do I lose respect because our ideas might conflict.

We have a complicated assignment until November. We have to take seriously our responsibility for squelching biases, or the perception of them. At the same time, many readers today have a hair-trigger for proclaiming bias, and we’re not helped when whole political organizations establish a strategy of urging people to claim bias as a way to get letters to the editor published. (The MoveOn organization sent an email blast linking to instructions on how to do this for an orchestrated attack on Sarah Palin. A reader sent me the email, complete with a Web form for sending letters to the editor and a suggestion that the best way to get letters published is to pick an article and allege your viewpoint was excluded.)

For good and for bad, happy election season to all.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Politics, Reader issues | Comments

Eagle ethics policies govern meals, gifts

Aug. 11, 20086:31 p.m.

I have a couple of great ethics questions from a reader puzzled by two posts on our Business Casual blog recently. Barry read posts by Carrie Rengers, our business columnist, referring to a lunch she had with a local businessman. In a previous post, Carrie said she flipped a coin with the businessman to determine who would buy lunch (she lost). She was soon leaving for a vacation in Las Vegas, and the man also gave her $100 and asked her to bet it for him.

Barry asks what our ethics policies are regarding sources buying lunch for Eagle reporters, columnists or editors. What if she had lost the coin flip? And, he asks, “Secondly, is it acceptable practice to receive ‘a crisp $100 bill’ from that source?”

We do have a specific ethics policy regarding a wide range of issues, including meals and gifts, and we are in the process of updating that policy. As soon as the revisions are complete, I’ll post the entire policy on Kansas.com for readers to see.

Our current policy on buying meals says it’s preferable to pick up the tab or split it. If paying or splitting isn’t feasible, or the source insists on picking up the tab, then make plans to reciprocate and take the other person to lunch in the near future. This is fairly common practice in our newsroom with sources we meet frequently for lunch or dinner.

Our policy on accepting gifts is also clear: We don’t. In this case, the businessman did not give the money to Carrie as a gift. He gave it to her asking her to wager it on his behalf in Las Vegas. Our ethics policies are clearly not meant to cover every imaginable situation, and do not address what to do if someone asks you to bet money for them.

But here’s the “however” – I still wish we had not accepted the $100 and agreed to wager it. It doesn’t violate the letter of the ethics policy, but, simply put, it looks bad. It opens us to the perception, as Barry interpreted it, that we took money from a source. It could potentially compromise our impartiality in the future. The best course of action in this case would have been to explain that we can’t accept the money or bet it for him.

But here’s another “however” – those types of decisions are difficult to think through on the spur of a moment when a source is asking you (with no ill intent) to bet the money for him. I know Carrie to be an ethical journalist who takes great pains to discuss potential conflicts with me or other editors. Many readers don’t know that about her, and know only that she wrote about taking $100 from a source. Given the benefit of time to discuss that decision, I believe she would have handled it differently.

Hindsight, as always, is much sharper than foresight.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Kansas.com, News content, Newspaper ethics, Reader issues | Comments

Some thoughts on Gene Stephenson coverage

Aug. 6, 20085:24 p.m.

A reader (and former Eagle reporter) wrote yesterday asking me to discuss why, in her view, we did not thoroughly cover the stalking allegations against Wichita State baseball coach Gene Stephenson and why the coverage ran in a non-sports section. Her feeling was that media in town ignored or “glossed-over” the story and she wanted to know more about the case.

One thing we can agree on is that we’d like to know more, also.  The reason The Eagle has consistently fought to open court proceedings and records is that we believe there is an inherent public interest in an open and transparent legal system. In this case, however, the lawsuit against Stephenson was ended with a confidential out-of-court settlement, and neither party has agreed to talk to us. I understand why that may frustrate readers who want to know whether the allegations against Stephenson had any basis, or whether the accusations were false.

As our Opinion page staff noted today, accountability is particularly important in this case because Stephenson is a very public figure representing a taxpayer-funded institution.

We would love to have more information to publish, too. But I disagree that this equates to The Eagle treating Stephenson with kid gloves, as this reader believes. In fact, the day we learned of the lawsuit against Stephenson, we published a front-page story on the allegations. Readers sometimes assume that sports writers, who often have less-formal relationships with their sources (teams and coaches) then news beat writers, seek to “cover up” for coaches and players in trouble. No doubt that occasionally happens, but it’s not the norm.

We assigned the Stephenson story to a metro desk reporter who had never met Stephenson and doesn’t recall ever even attending a WSU baseball game. There is no favoritism at play.

After that initial front-page story, we published a second front-page “follow-up” story on the lawsuit. We also published a few small updates when the court case was postponed. The story on the out-of-court settlement ran in the Local & State section.

I agree it’s a judgment call on whether to publish that story there, on 1A, or in Sports. With no details on the settlement available, it didn’t meet our requirement for a front-page story. We published it in the Local section because Stephenson is a more widely known public figure in Wichita and that section has a larger readership than the Sports section. Generally if a sports figure is known only to sports readers, we would run that story in the Sports section. In our view, Stephenson merited a story position to a more broad audience.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Reader issues | Comments Off

Stories on suicide, aviation strike draw complaint

Aug. 4, 20087:59 p.m.

I had a voice mail message today from a reader upset with us for running a front-page story Sunday on Sedgwick County’s rising suicide rate while also publishing a story about an impending machinists strike at Hawker Beechcraft.

She suggests that suicides increase during an aviation strike and that it was insensitive of us to publish the suicide story during a strike.

A couple of thoughts come to mind. One is that, if there truly is a correlation between increased suicide and aviation strikes (I’m not aware that we’ve researched for such a connection), then Tim Potter’s story, which included resources for suicide prevention, would seem particularly well-timed, not poorly timed.

Additionally, though, it’s probably safe to say that the safeguards in our editing process would not typically flag such a potentially tenuous connection of two unrelated news stories. Our copy desk, which is the last line of defense against errors or inadvertently embarrassing juxtaposition, does a terrific job of looking for potential connections before words and images on a computer screen become a printed newspaper.

As a former copy editor, I’m not surprised that someone didn’t suggest a connection between the two stories. I wouldn’t have, either. (And to the caller’s question, no, I’m not new to Wichita.) Tim’s story is a weekend “enterprise” story which, for the Sunday paper, is typically written and edited ahead of the usual daily news production cycle. Longer Sunday stories are generally ready for publication by Friday if not earlier, and often the reporter and editor are not in the office on Saturday when the newspaper is being produced – in design, and on the copy desk, where headlines are written.

The Hawker strike story was “live news,” a story covered on Saturday by reporter Molly McMillin. By the time the strike vote was final and Molly’s story was written, Tim’s story already had been written and put into the production process. I explain this simply to illustrate how two news stories can end up on the same page, but take widely varying timelines to get there.

None of this is to say that I don’t believe a strike is a hardship on the striking workers, as well as a company’s non-striking employees. Sometimes, though, a reader may have a personal connection to a story and see a relationship with other news that most readers, and most editors, don’t see on first inspection.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, Reader issues | Comments Off

A tip of the fedora to the newspaperman

Aug. 1, 20087:00 p.m.

I recently spent a week with Steve Smith and 10 other editors and their top Web editors at a Knight Digital Media Center conference in L.A., focused on the digital future of the news industry. Steve is a former managing editor of The Eagle, now executive editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane.

As soon as I read Steve’s recent late-night blog post waxing nostalgic for the dying breed of hard-bitten newsman, I knew his post would draw some predictable criticism. Yes, those good old days tended to shut out anyone who wasn’t a good old boy, and the arrogance that has been an albatross for the news industry grew deep roots through that era. Some of the posted responses are the typical, “this is exactly what’s wrong with your business.”

I read Steve’s post as a harmless piece of end-of-the-day whimsy. Much of the good old days weren’t all that good. But Steve touched on something that another former Eagle managing editor, Theresa Johnson, and I talked about occasionally. Newspapers don’t really have many odd characters anymore (some of you who’ve been to the newsroom might dispute that). At least, they don’t make up the critical mass of the staff. Steve’s post reminded me of a story that a colleague from a small newspaper in North Carolina once told me, about an angry city editor who threw half of a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich at a reporter. The sub sandwich hit the reporter in the head, and then everyone went back to their business.

I enjoyed reading Steve’s post, but I don’t feel all that nostalgic about many parts of the good old days. Like any industry, changing times mean letting go of some parts of what we were — the hardest pieces are the ones that disappoint readers. We tend to think the news business is a little different in the changes to its culture and character, but as I look across the downtown skyline on a Friday night, I’m thinking the stories would be just as colorful in all those buildings emptied out for the weekend.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under News content, Newspaper ethics, People | Comments Off

Why we ran the photo containing a racial slur

July 27, 20085:54 a.m.

Some might find the photo on the front page of Sunday’s paper of a defaced Obama sign objectionable.
We debated whether to run a photo of something that we could so easily describe in words.
Tell someone that a campaign sign of a black candidate was defaced with a racial slur, and it’s not hard to imagine what the sign said or what it looked like.
On one hand, we thought that running the photo might be fanning the flames of racism. That we were insensitive to older readers who lived through some of the painful experiences of the civil rights movement. That we were helping to spread a message scrawled by a bigot that only a few people would have seen before the sign was taken down.
On the other hand, some felt strongly that we should shine a light on racism that still exists in our community and not hide it.
The article by Christina Woods states that the Obama campaign is furthering a dialogue on race.
The photo should also spark discussion.
By running the photo we are saying that this isn’t typical behavior. This is wrong.
We didn’t want it to be a dominant photograph on the front page, because we didn’t feel like the sentiment expressed dominates our reality today.
It is a vestige of an ugly past. But as Christina’s article points out, our future is much more hopeful.

By Jean Hays | Filed under Current Affairs, Newspaper ethics, Politics | Comments

A reminder on our comment policies

July 21, 20081:26 p.m.

Here’s a reminder of our terms of use for Kansas.com message and comment boards. As I’ve explained here in the past, we don’t routinely monitor user comments, but when an offending comment is flagged to our attention, we’ll remove it if it violates the terms of use. The most common reason comments are removed is if they are defamatory or abusive.

While that occasionally sets a comment poster into a rant about censorship, we want this web site to be about civil, constructive and meaningful conversation. No one has a given right to use this site to post comments that are offensive.  The Web is wide open for you to create your own site if that’s the conversation you want to have.

If you’re a site user who is bugged by comments that you find off-topic or offensive, please don’t hesitate to flag them for review. We’ll be glad to do that to keep these pages open for civil communication.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Kansas.com, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Reader issues, Web/Tech | Comments

Who doesn’t know Sebelius is a Democrat?

July 7, 20086:51 p.m.

A reader took us to task for recent story headlined, “Governor Warns of Revenue Shortfall.” In the fourth paragraph, reporter David Klepper attributes a quotation from Kathleen Sebelius this way: “said Sebelius, a Democrat.” The reader, another David, wonders why we had to refer to her party, and what implication we were trying to make – that if the governor were a Republican, there would be no revenue shortfall?

Sometimes, a Democrat is just a Democrat. The reference to the governor’s party wasn’t meant as an implication of anything other than identifying her political party. One thing to keep in mind as Sebelius’ name floats as a potential vice president candidate – stories about her are being read online across the country as people seek to learn more about her. Such seemingly minor details help readers less familiar with Kansas politics. So the party affiliation – while extraneous to some – can aid clarity for thousands of other readers.

By Sherry Chisenhall | Filed under Current Affairs, Headlines, News content, Newspaper ethics, People, Politics, Reader issues | Comments