News
Guest Column: A Retro Proposal to Restore The Public’s Trust in Media
In 1976, the first year of that annual Gallup poll showing this year’s dreadful erosion in media trust, pollsters found that 72% of those polled had “a great deal/fair amount” of trust in the press. This year a mere 31% felt that way. As erosion in public trust of media becomes an avalanche, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ken Wells suggests a return to the agnostic newsroom.
Creators of ‘Empire City’ podcast discuss NYPD past and present, what media gets wrong about police
Ryan Howzell, project manager of NYU’s Ethics and Journalism Initiative, moderated the panel. The conversation ranged from technical discussions about the creators’ archival research process to the media’s central role in shaping public understanding of the police.
Event Takeaways: CBS News’s Dr. Jon LaPook on Ethics in Science, Health, and Medical Reporting
"Disinfecting" misinformation, offering context, navigating conflicts of interest, and more in our takeaways from our Ethics in Medical Reporting event with CBS News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook.
Getting Past Newsroom Myopia
The results of the 2024 election left many national media commentators stunned. This surprise begs the question: what can coastal big-city news organizations do to more accurately reflect and understand the concerns of the American public?
My Student Asked: Is It Ethical to Share Common Experiences, Interests or Beliefs with a Source?
The other day, a student asked me whether, in interviewing a union official for a story, it was OK to tell the official that the student had been a union organizer a few years before entering journalism school. Would this be ethical, the student asked?
Collier Award Issue Spotlight: False Equivalencies
We asked the inaugural judges for the Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism to break down the seven core ethical issue areas entrants can address in their submissions. This week, Gina Chua, Executive Editor at Semafor, offers guidance on pursuing "fair and balanced" reporting when "both sides" aren't equal.
Guest Column: Journalists’ Obligation to Report — and Re-Report — the Facts About the Election
The truth is that voting in this country is relatively safe and secure. The results are reliable. Journalists need to defend the mechanics of democracy by also reporting the facts about the actual soundness of the overall system, not the corrosive conspiracy theories emanating from candidates and their social feeds.
Archival Producers Alliance: Best Practices for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries
For Stephanie Jenkins, establishing AI best practices for documentary film began as a game of catch-up, after she discovered last year that producers in the field had already begun to experiment with deploying generative AI to create false historical footage, images, and artifacts, with little or no disclosure or guardrails. Last month, she and other industry veterans released a new Best Practices guide for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries through the newly-formed Archival Producers Alliance (APA). In this edition of Decoded, Managing Editor Ryan Howzell sat down with Jenkins and fellow APA Co-Director Rachel Antell to discuss the APA's new guide and what multimedia journalists and producers stand to learn from it.
Chalkbeat Code of Ethics – Interviewing Kids, Teacher Fear in the Time of Book Bans
With schools back in session, it’s a great time to take a look at Chalkbeat’s Code of Ethics and see what the education-focused nonprofit newsroom can teach journalists – in and out of schools – about working with minors and about accountability.
Ethics and Democracy | Everyday Ethics
Received Hacked Info? Now What? Five Takeaways About How to Ethically Navigate Reporting of Hacked Materials
Source scrutiny, foreign intervention, audience transparency and more in our takeaways from our September event with Semafor's Ben Smith, Columbia Journalism Review's Sewell Chan, and Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press.
