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Posts Tagged “
Ethics
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war
Clinton v. Purdum (And Everyone Else)
Bill Clinton has become an embarrassment to his party, friends, and family, with his tone-deaf angry tirades and bizarre rhetorical missteps and also his habit of globe-trotting with scummy over-sexed billionaires. But if you tell him this, he becomes quite angry! Todd Purdum, who, despite being married to a former Clinton staffer, has written a number of negative things about Clinton over the years, is now the target of a raging tirade by the former president. All because he insinuated some untoward things using dozens of unnamed anonymous sources in Vanity Fair! Now Purdum has responded (clip attached). So. What did the article do wrong? And what did Clinton get wrong? And, uh, what the hell happened to the guy? More »
ethics
US Surgeons Save Japanese Gangster, Who Can Return To Menacing Reporters
Earlier this month we told you about Jake Adelstein, the American reporter who spent 15 years covering organized crime in Japan and who now, unfortunately, finds himself and his family marked for death by an angry gangster. Adelstein's tormentor, Yakuza boss Tadamasa Goto, has been very sick lately; Adelstein's hope was that Goto would pass away, so he could return to America to be with his family without fear of assassination. Well, bad news: it's been revealed that Goto and three of his henchmen got precious, lifesaving liver transplants in Los Angeles (while many others died waiting). Thanks, science! More »
gossip
Post Shuts Down Gossipeuse's Freebie Cocktail Party
Popular Page Six gossip hack Paula Froelich had a party thrown in her honor last night, complete with her own signature cocktail: the IZZE FROLIC. Awww! She sent an email to all of her contacts saying, "It seems someone has decided to name a drink after me. I think we can use it as a good excuse to go play." But when the party happened, one boldface name was conspicuously absent: New York Post reporter Paula Froelich! So what happened? Bothersome ethics, of course. More »
under god
J-School Grads Pledge Allegiance to Not Making Stuff Up
Journalism students in Reno, Nevada (they have schools there?) are all going to sign a symbolic ethics pledge tomorrow, thus guaranteeing forever the survival and viability of journalism in America. The story is kind of too sad to even make fun of. Except not really! They're having a reception in the atrium of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada and all the seniors will solemnly promise to not make stuff up. If they ever get jobs. That's what's been wrong this whole time! We forgot to make all the reporters put their hands on bibles before filing stories! More »
journalismism
5 Years After Jayson Blair, Newspapers Too Broke to Care About Ethics
Superstar MarketWatch media columnist Jon Friedman remembered recently that there was this young fellow who worked for the Times once who got in trouble for making things up and lying. It was a bit of a scandal! It happened five years ago this... season, so Friedman asks a couple folk what they think of the current state of media ethics. Salon's Joan Walsh says the Jayson Blair (for that was the fabricator's name) scandal forced writers and editors to remind themselves not to lie, or to maybe fact-check once in a while. Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell says the scandal encouraged more papers to issue corrections more often and not plagiarize so much. But a couple critics note that Jayson Blair is really the least of the newsmedia's woes in 2008. More »
journalismism
How to Get Hotties to do Your Work For You
Is there anything worse about being a reporter than transcribing? Well, maybe, but listening (and relistening) to tape from an interview is one of the most mind-numbing tasks in journalism. Actually, your mind can't even turn numb, because you need to be at attention the whole time. Added to the fun is hearing your voice on tape, which at first makes you wonder why you haven't been punched in the face more for your bizarre inflections. Once you get to the top of the journalism heap, though, you can just get American Apparel models to transcribe for you! As long as your husband hired them to intern at his legendary literary magazine, anyway. Even if you yourself aren't actually writing for that particularly legendary literary magazine!More »
paul tilley
There was a ton of debate about the death of Paul Tilley, the ad agency exec who committed suicide last month. Some people charged mean bloggers with helping to push him over the edge—charges that seemed increasingly ridiculous, as people took time to consider the full situation. But Liberty Mutual, the huge insurance company, had another thought about Tilley's death: what a great way to promote our company! And that's exactly what they did, the sickos.
More »
Liberty Mutual Uses Ad Exec's Suicide To Promote Itself
There was a ton of debate about the death of Paul Tilley, the ad agency exec who committed suicide last month. Some people charged mean bloggers with helping to push him over the edge—charges that seemed increasingly ridiculous, as people took time to consider the full situation. But Liberty Mutual, the huge insurance company, had another thought about Tilley's death: what a great way to promote our company! And that's exactly what they did, the sickos.
More »
journalismism
Stanley Fish Finds Right And Wrong Spectacularly Uninteresting
Stanley Fish, the author, law professor, columnist, and one of the Times' innumerable bloggers, thinks it would be helpful if readers know exactly what his motivation is with all this highbrow writing he does. "Given a choice between being trivial and being ethical in any direction whatsoever, I'll take trivial (although I might want to debate the judgment), because ethics is not something I'm doing in these columns," he explains in his latest entry. How about superfluous, then? Would you consider being pompous and superfluous, Mr. Fish? Sure you would! More »
journalismism
J-School Dean Vows To Save All Notes Forever If Kids Will Shut Up
The formal final word on the Northwestern University J-school scandal that rocked the world has arrived. As you'll recall, the scandal arose after Medill Dean John Lavine couldn't snappily produce hard evidence of the origins of some anonymous student quotes he used in the alumni magazine. This led to an uproar, which was inane. Now, the formal investigation of this serious matter has concluded. The letter from the Provost has a satisfying undertone of prickliness: the investigative committee said Lavine "could not reasonably be expected to have retained for a year the notes or e-mails documenting the sources of quotations used in the letter; nonetheless, the committee advised that in the future such meticulous archiving might be desirable given the heightened awareness of the problems that can result." FINE, we'll save all the paper scraps for you annoying students! Lavine has also promised not to use any more unattributed quotes in "Medill publications," thereby obliterating the small chance that some newsworthy investigation would ever be printed therein. Truly a step forward for journalism. The Provost's entire note is below.More »
call off your old tired ethics
'New York' Mag Is A Foul Pimp Of Sex Slaves, Claim Ladies
The amazingly old-school feminists at the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women will be protesting New York magazine on Thursday at noon! Why? "With ads for sex tours that advertise 'have your own harem' and ads for massage parlors that promise 'accommodating Asian women' New York Magazine is the marketing arm of the organized crime world of prostitution and trafficking.... It makes $10,000 a week facilitating the commercial sex industry." Oh my God, 10,000 whole dollars a week? Our femiladyist friends do have at least one good point: Some of the advertising brothels of New York probably are full of Peter Landesman-style sex slaves! Eww! But after going Andrea Dworkin-wrong by painting all prostitution ads with the brush of duress and international conspiracy, they then go further afield: "New York Magazine represents the life and times of New Yorkers," they claim. Well, we've got bigger problems than sex trafficking if that's true. Update: OMG, sex ads and protest canceled!
the only validation that matters
Rethinking Deborah Solomon
New York Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt's column this weekend took on Times magazine Q&A'er Deborah Solomon in response to a recent New York Press cover story on Solomon's editing antics. (Solomon's penchant for refashioning the responses of her interview subjects for her 700-word weekly column earned her the serious ire of NPR host Ira Glass, columnist Amy Dickinson and the LA Times critic Christopher Knight.) Solomon doesn't make much of an effort to come off clean in Hoyt's column, calling Dickinson "boastful," (mean!) and misplacing the tape of her Ira Glass interview (whoops!). Solomon also told the Times' internal watchdog that she was just joking when she told a Columbia Journalism Review reporter in 2005 to "Feel free to mix the pieces of this interview around, which is what I do. There's no Q. and A. protocol... you can write the manual." Hold your horses, Deb, Hoyt writes. "In fact, there is a protocol, and 'Questions For' isn't living up to it," he says. Oh snap. The take-away point here may be, however, that Christ, the New York Press had a story with legs! One with tormented prose that could easily have been cut in half, but nevertheless! You don't have a story until the New York Times says you do, so by all means, congratulations.
questions and answers
Ira Glass Attacks 'Times' Q&A Queen Deborah Solomon
The New York Press is carrying a breathless 3,000-word piece today alleging that Deborah Solomon, the awesomely tactless New York Times Magazine Q&A queen, redistributed and flat-out invented questions she hadn't actually asked in final versions of interviews that she conducted with "This American Life" host Ira Glass and advice columnist Amy Dickinson. The subjects cried foul to Press reporter Matt Elzweig, who was until about a year and a half ago a security guard at the Met. The Times was not particularly responsive to his inquiries. Elzweig's piece reads as though he's just discovered White House plumbers in Times executive editor Bill Keller's basement. Instead, the Press has, for the most part, stumbled upon a fairly common editing practice. More »
new york post
Dumbass 'Post' Writer Plagiarizes, Bores Us
We're not going to get on our high horse to condemn plagiarism. (That'd be just so predictable.) But may we get on our high horse for a moment to condemn stupid plagiarism? The News gleefully notes today that the Post suspended reporter Andy Geller for a month "after the newspaper discovered he copied massive sections of an article." And where did he find the article from which he plagiarized? In the Times. On the same fucking day. More »
new york times
'Times' Art Critic Grace Glueck Serving as Museum Trustee
Here's a good one: Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes reports that Times art critic Grace Glueck sits on the Board of Trustees at the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires. Which makes writing about art so much easier for her, really. Except: More »
new york times
'Times' Doors Merrily Revolve
From the front page of today's Times Business section: More »
media
Advertisers Love Those Freewheelin' Zines
Sixth borough advocate Jessica Pressler has abandoned her dreams of legitimizing Philly and instead turned her attention to the revival of the zine, those lovingly crafted obscure magazines with miniscule circulations and offbeat content. While the zines of old were likely pasted together in basement bedroom (or Krucoff's apartment), nowadays they're high-design productions with significant cover prices. There's also heavy advertising, which defines the difference between these small, independent publications and their bigger counterparts. Swindle mag's Shepard Fairey explains: More »
new york times
