Ethical challenges in journalism and Media Accountability

Recent cases

Session 2

Photo: imago/ecomedia/robert fishman

2July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Key issues in journalism –Cases and stakeholders’ reactions

• Freedom of expression / Italy - Sallusti• Freedom of information/ Switzerland - YQM• Telling the truth / Finland - bullying• Copyright. Fair use/ Romania - GSP• Protecting sources/ Romania - PM• Private life/ United Kingdom – phone hacking• Stereotypes. Hate speech/ Switzerland - Roma• Conflict of interests – surreptitious advertising/ Finland -

L’Oreal• Conflict of interests – media campaigns for political reasons/

Romania - OTV

3July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Freedom of expression & state intervention

• In September 2012, the Italian journalist Alessandro Sallusti was sentenced to 14 months of prison, for libel and (repeated) omitted control (Sallusti had faced similar charges in the past)

• In 2007, a comment about an abortion performed on a 13-year-old girl, signed with the pseudonym ‘Dreyfus’, appeared in Libero. As Libero said, the girl entered a psychiatric clinic after the operation

• “If there was a death penalty in Romania, it should be applied in this case – for the parents, for the gynecologist, for the judge”, commented ‘Dreyfus’. The judge of the case filed charges.

• Sallusti was the editor and was considered to be responsible for the publication

4July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Freedom of expression & state intervention

• Sallusti – ready to go to jail, but the sentence is unjustified and would have been more expectable in repressive countries such as Syria or North Korea

• "The ruling defeats and kills freedom of expression" - Franco Siddi, secretary of FNSI, an Italian journalists union

• "medieval, unconstitutional and contrary to the freedom of the press"

- Alessandro Pace, a constitutional lawyer

• “outrageous” Reporters Without Borders

Sallusti in custody. Foto:http://www.informarezzo.com

5July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Freedom of information

• Swiss MAI ‘Quality of the Media Yearbook’, launched 2010 by University of Zurich sociologist Prof. Kurt Imhof & research team to promote debate on the quality of the media and to raise awareness of the importance of high quality journalism. The quality of democracy depends on the quality of the communication of information to the public by the media

• Findings: news coverage in Switzerland had become far more superficial; mostly limited to breaking news; online versions - click oriented and inferior to their printed counterparts

• Reactions in Switzerland• 2010, 2011 - mainly negative, especially from yellow press; very

controversial debates• 2012 - non-reporting• Discussions by academics and members of the public on quality

journalism

6July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Telling the truth

• 2011: Finnish writer started online campaign based on the alleged suicide of 15-year-old schoolgirl after years of bullying

• Wide interest on social media and mass media resulting in a book about the girl, called ‘Elisa the Angel’

• The credibility of the writer was questioned in social media and by two freelancers. Result: The story was fabricated. Police started an investigation into a possible case of fraud

• Author: “artistic license; turned real events into a partly fictional account”

• Reaction in Finland• National debate about responsibilities of authors & media outlets• Chairman of the Union of Finnish Writers - writers should be explicit in

their use of artistic licence• Council of Mass Media - more thorough fact-checking needed

7July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Telling the truth

• Police did not press charges• The authours of the article won the Bonnier Best Story 2012

Award • No complaints were filed to the CMM about any media

outlet’s reporting in the case• Debate about journalistic ethics and fact-checking still

surfaces from time to time

• Some journalists objected the CMM decision: • school bullying is a real

social problem and it was crucially important to bring it up to the public.

Elisa, the Angle. Foto: http://www.helsinginuutiset.fi/

8July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Copyright: Fair use

• Andrei Niculescu, a Romanian sports journalist, was accused by readers of having published a substantial number of international football pieces containing unattributed quotes, ideas and expressions from articles of foreign authors, especially from Spain

• The management of Gazeta Sporturilor (GSP) conducted an internal investigation in 2012, by comparing texts that appeared in multiple foreign blogs and sites.

• Reactions in Romania• GSP suspended the contract with Andrei Niculescu

9July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Copyright: Fair use

• GSP apologised to foreign journalists and bloggers, whose work was not used fairly

• They should have had better filters for the journalistic articles they published

• Niculescu stated: “A stage of my life is concluded… Never trust anyone. Especially the people you admire. They are the ones who will stab you in the back. I leave them the pleasure to investigate from whom I took this quote”

• Members of the audience hope a sports

TV channel will also end its contract with Niculescu

Plagiarism checker

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Protecting sources

• The accusations of plagiarism brought in 2012 to the Romanian prime minister Victor Ponta – a ‘plot’ in which TVR INFO, which belongs to the Romanian public service media, was involved

• The site of TVR INFO was the first that published a set of documents with comparisons between the texts of Ponta’s works and the works of the authors. The source was anonymous

• Reaction in Romania• Several commissions, from the Ministry and from the University of

Bucharest, had opposing views on the case. The issue was widely debated in the media, both in Romania and abroad

• The management, close to the PM party, decided to close both TVR Info, the TV station, and the associated site, for financial reasons. Several journalistic investigations were conducted to reveal the source of the information about plagiarism

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Protecting sources

• All members of the team that worked for TVR Info, but one, lost their jobs

• The public focused more on the issue of the plagiarism rather than on the source of the information. It was a major public interest event

• The former team of TVR Info was awarded a symbolic prize for their courage of telling the truth despite the consequences

• The case appeared in an annual review of Active Watch, member of the Reporters without Borders network.

• The documents can be found on other sites and the source is still protected You are fired!

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Private life

• 2006 – UK’s Information Commissioner: 305 journalists from 32 newspapers and magazines employed private investigators to obtain about 4,000 items of personal information

• 2008 – a News of the World editor and a private investigator were jailed, for intercepting phone messages of the Royal Household

• Since 2011 - more than 100 arrests, closure of UK’s oldest and biggest selling weekly News of the World (2.6m, News International, R. Murdoch), after the hacking of the mobile phone of a murdered teenager was exposed by The Guardian

• The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Private life

JK Rowling. Photo: guardian.co.uk

“The effect [of journalists] on me and our family life truly cannot be overstated. We were literally driven out of the first house I had ever owned (which faced almost directly onto the street) because of journalists banging on the door, questioning the neighbours and sitting in parked cars immediately outside the gate. Old friendships were tested as journalists turned up on their doorsteps, and offered money for stories on me.” – J K Rowling’s statement to Leveson Inquiry

“What we did not appreciate was the extent to which the newspapers would intrude on our private turmoil and how little control we would have over where the lines were drawn in this respect. We did not have any experience in dealing with the media and we had to make a lot of difficult choices, without the benefit of professional advice and at an extremely harrowing time in our lives.” – statement of parents of murdered teenager to Leveson Inquiry

Little control

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Stereotypes

‘In the outskirts of a Kosovar city, a group of Roma kids live with their families in a slum built over a garbage dump… These Roma children only know life in the dump, a poisoned and diseased playground.’ Original caption for the image

‘The Roma are coming: Raiding Switzerland’They come, they steal and they go. Roma families from Eastern Europe are responsible for a large part of the increasing crime tourism- Weltwoche, Switzerland, 2012

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Stereotypes

• Swiss and international reaction• use of the picture & articles were discussed widely, quite negatively,

in Switzerland, but also abroad - Germany, UK (BBC) • picture usage – racist, discriminating Roma (Gypsy)• readers filed charges against the ‘Weltwoche’. The office of public

prosecution started an investigation against the weekly magazine• In Germany, the Council for Germany's Roma went to court and tried

to ban the magazine in the country• ‘Zürcher Prozesse’ (‘Zurich trials’) by Swiss theatrical artist Milo Rau

• a court room in a theater• more than twenty experts (media researchers, journalists from

‘Weltwoche’, representatives of ethnic minorities, politicians) • editorial decisions publicly discussed in front of a jury, a real

defendant and a lawyer, as public attorney• ‘Weltwoche’ - completely absolved

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Conflict of interests – Surreptitious advertising

• In October 2012, the Finish women’s magazine ‘Gloria’ published a supplement with a focus on cosmetics and make-up products by L’Oreal – the company was the main advertiser

• A journalist in the competing women’s magazine, ‘Anna’, considered the supplement as an advertorial rather than journalism and filed a complaint to the Council of Mass Media (CMM)

• The complainer’s name was leaked; she was told by her editor-in-chief and the publisher’s representative that her complaint had endangered the company’s advertiser relations. The journalist withdrew her complaint, but was asked not to come back to work for six months

Journalists’ jobs are linked to advertising.Photo: http://www.behance.net/

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Conflict of interests – Surreptitious advertising

• CMM took up the complaint despite the withdrawal to highlight the autonomy of the media and their independence of advertisers

• Reaction in Finland:• Brief public discussion about editorial policies, especially the influence

of advertisers on journalism• Debate on journalists’ right to file complaints without fear of sanction

• The journalist accepted the offer of a half-year leave after negotiations

• CMM ruled that ‘Gloria’ had violated good journalistic practice

• CEO of ‘Gloria’ - the verdict would put the entire genre of lifestyle journalism in jeopardy. She left the company a month after the CMM verdict

• CMM - journalists and marketing departments should discuss future ways of working to satisfy financial needs without compromising journalism

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Conflict of interests - Media campaigns for political reasons

• In 2012, OTV was sanctioned several times by Romanian National Audiovisual Council (CNA) for continuous political campaign for Dan Diaconescu’s own party, the People’s Party, outside the electoral period. OTV is an example of tabloid press, which people watch for entertainment

• The CNA ended the broadcasting license for OTV television in January 2013. This is the ultimate punishment, if a TV station fails to follow the audio visual law• The TV station proved to be a powerful political instrument – People’s Party is now the third Romanian strongest party

OTV - A television banned by [President] Băsescu - capture from youtube.com

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Conflict of interests - Media campaigns for political reasons

• Since 2000, when it was first launched, OTV had been considered as a no rules TV station. Dan Diaconescu was jailed several times for blackmail

• In journalism schools OTV was presented as a classic example of what not to do

• DD & OTV - recurring subjects for humorous shows

• In 2002 CNA suspended OTV its license for hate speech. Both suspensions were presented by Dan Diaconescu as political retaliations

• Part of the Romanian press - the fines given by CNA to OTV led to bankruptcy

• Part of the audience of OTV - a defender of the public interest has been muzzled

• Given the opportunity the OTV audience would return to a similar TV program

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July 2013 Session 2 – Recent cases

Further reading

Christians, C. G., Fackler M., Richardson, K. B., Kreshel, P., Woods, R. H., 2011, Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning (9th Edition), Pearson. Couldry, N., M. Madianou and A. Pinchevski, 2013, Ethics of Media, Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire, New York.Fengler, S., T. Eberwein, G. Mazzoleni, C. Porlezza and S. Ruß-Mohl (ed.), 2013, Journalists and Media Accountability. An International Study of News People in the Digital Age, Peter Lang: New York. 

ReferencesSallusti: www.telegraph.co.uk, rsf.org , www.ilgiornale.it

QYB: www.foeg.uzh.ch/jahrbuch_en.html

Niculescu: www.gsp.ro

Roma child: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17687435

Phone hacking : ‘A royal tussle between press freedom and state-sanctioned self-regulation’, by Mike Jempson, in MediaAcT Final Research Report, 2013; http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk;

N. Couldry, M. Madianou and A. Pinchevski (2013), Ethics of Media, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire, New York.