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Wag the Dog is a movie about a hollywood producer and another man making up a war and creating a clip of footage from this war to cover up a sex scandal that the president was confronted in right before elections.

There are two sides to the story that this movie is about. The producer created this clip showing a woman running with a cat in her hands away from a burning city and she looks absolutely devastated. They also faked bringing a soldier back from war and put on a fake funeral for him and displayed it on TV. Only the president and people on the inside of this manipulation knew that this was fake and a way to distract the public from the sex scandal until after the elections were over.

The other side of the story is the general public. The United States watched all of this and believed that there was a war breaking out in Albania and that troops were fighting there and also believed that this “soldier” was actually a soldier who died a hero when in reality he was a psychotic man who was locked up and on anti-psychotic meds and had nothing to do with war or being a soldier. The public was manipulated in order for them to not think about the president in a bad light right before elections and so they would vote for him to be reelected.

Media manipulation is the huge ethical issue that we talked about in class in regards to Wag the Dog. As stated above, the public was deceived and tricked into believing that there was a war going on in order to get the president reelected. This is by no means ethical but unfortunately it isn’t something that rarely happens in news today. The ethical issue is that it creates this false sense of what is going on in the world and manipulates people into thinking a certain way instead of thinking about other issues going on. The news focused so much on the “war” that the sex scandal got completely covered up and people were not able to think about that or know the truth about that before elections.

There is history that goes behind media manipulation and it still happens all the time presently. Examples of media manipulation from the past are the hype about Ebola, the ISIS coverage, the different views on coffee for health, wine being good for the heart, CNN making up a war story, etc. Each of these stories manipulated the public into believing things that were either not true or they hyped it up to be something bigger than it was.

I personally think that creating a war in order to cover up a scandal is ridiculous. If I was the producer, I would never have created this story just for a president to get reelected when clearly he probably shouldn’t be reelected anyways. There is an ethical issue here with manipulation and although it’s done all the time, I still do not agree with it.

In class we talked about how news today is so monopolized and how people have such a one-sided view of news due to the selection bias. If someone chooses to watch Fox, they will probably always agree with everything on Fox and never watch anything from CNN or many other news sources to get another view of a story. Media manipulation impacts journalism because it takes away trust from journalists if people find out a story is fake and it also makes it harder for journalists to do their jobs fairly when news outlets want to create stories and want to manipulate the story that the journalist is covering.

Sources:

Nicole Kraft’s Media Law and Ethics class discussion on April 16th, 2015

Wag the Dog (movie)

Rolling Stone UVA Final Presentation

We are doing a powerpoint presentation on the Rolling Stone UVA story with a poll for the class to take, a video summarizing the whole story, and engaging the class in a discussion based on the ethical issues, solutions, and what it means for journalism as a whole.

Allison Bugenstein, Jimena Esparza, Alissa Schultz and Lauren Mears

The Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus: a Brutal Assault and struggle for Justice at UVA” has brought up a lot of ethical issues in the news since it was uncovered that the story was in fact false. Is is shocking that such a trusted publication could miss such big mistakes and serves as a reminder to all journalist the importance of fact checking and how too much trust in a source can backfire.

We plan on presenting the issue to the class through an interactive power point with videos and clips from the story to help everyone understand what went wrong and how it can be prevented. We will use a game and discussion questions to help engage the class and share ideas.

Smash His Camera is a paparazzi documentary that we watched in class. Ron Galella is a free lance photographer and the focus of the documentary.

Galella is known for pushing his limits to get the best photos that he can get. His main target was always Jackie Onassis and he would go to extremes to get her photograph. Galella would hide in bushes, forge his credentials, sneak in places, make a hole in the shrubs that block her front yard and then stick his camera through it, chase her through the park, and follow her around. Ron felt that he would do whatever it took to get the photos that would sell and to get the best ones he could get. In his mind, he was doing nothing wrong and he felt that he was not putting anyone in danger or stepping over any ethical boundaries.

Jackie Onassis and other photographers in the documentary did not feel the same way about Galella’s behavior. Jackie was riding her bike one day and Ron hid in the bushes and popped out right as she was going by and he took her photos. Jackie was so frustrated with Ron always chasing her and obsessing over her that she filed a complaint against him and took him to court. Originally Jackie won and Ron was told to stay within 150 yards of her and her children and then later on Ron appealed and it was brought down to only 25 yards. Jackie felt that her children were in danger and she did not like Ron chasing her everywhere because she just wanted privacy. The other photographers in the documentary said that Ron was an asshole, he was rude, he was nuts, etc.

In class, we talked about how free lance journalists have the least access when it comes to anything. We also talked about how the First Amendment does not give us a right to privacy explicitly. There have been implications that privacy can be pulled from certain parts of the Constitution if interpreted in certain ways but the Constitution does not come out and say that people have a right to privacy. Since Jackie does not have a right to privacy, especially with her being a famous person always in the spotlight, in this aspect, Galella was not violating her Constitutional rights. However, we did talk in class about how just because we don’t have a Constitutional right to privacy, does not mean we do not get other implied privacy such as the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant and probable cause.

I do think Galella passed the line of giving Jackie privacy. If I was Ron Galella, I don’t think I would feel right doing this and I would most certainly not feel right about giving false credentials. I also would not feel comfortable if I was Jackie Onassis in this situation because Galella would always obsess with her in comparison to other photographers. If I was the judge, I probably would have had a restraining order put on Ron as well as kept the distance of 150 yards or more away from her children and Jackie.

This impacts journalism because the paparazzi see how much they can push their limits without really getting into trouble. Clearly Ron Galella is successful and wealthy because of what he does and if others want to be like him, this documentary shows that there’s a lot they can do if they want photographs that badly. I also think that this affects journalism because Ron Galella had some of his photographs put in magazines and newspapers and so that goes to show that the paparazzi are able to get these photos and do something with them and journalists could really benefit. I think a journalist would be very happy to be Ron Galella’s friend because they would have access to some very interesting and great pictures that nobody else has.

Sources:

Nicole Kraft lectures and class

Smash His Camera documentary

The Constitution

In the film, Shattered Glass, Stephen Glass is the main character whom the movie is about. Stephen is the youngest journalist at The New Republic and eventually he gets caught with fabricating a hacking story called “Hack Heaven,” which then leads to revealing that he fabricated a majority of his stories.

Stephen Glass never let anyone in on his lies. He was a well-respected person among his co-workers and he always had exciting stories that he was covering. Nobody really suspected that he was lying or fabricating any of his stories because he always covered his lies. He made up emails, phone numbers connected to voicemails he created, websites, companies (like Jukt Micronics) in order to get through the fact check system of The New Republic. Stephen would argue that he was fabricating things to catch people’s attention and obtain the attention that he wanted. His goal was to get a Pulitzer and he didn’t care about lying in order to quickly gain success and attention.

The other side of this argument is basically everyone else; his co-workers, the magazine, the readers, friends and family of his. They all had no clue that he was fabricating stories until he was caught. Even when Chuck Lane caught Glass at first and accused him, none of Stephen’s co-workers believed Chuck and they were telling him that he couldn’t fire Stephen because he was young and stupid. However, once they finally went through all the past stories that Stephen wrote and fact checked them, they realized that Chuck was right. His co-workers were all shocked and so upset with Stephen, as they should be.

Other journalists who fabricated stories are Jonah Lehrer, Jayson Blair, and Janet Cooke. All of them were not as bad as Stephen Glass because Stephen made up over half of his stories out of the 40 or so total stories. Janet Cooke was a precedent case before Glass and she used multiple people to form one character, named Jimmy, to show the issue of children using heroin. In class, we talked about the SPJ Code of Ethics and how one of the main things it establishes is reporting the truth and being accurate. Stephen clearly went against this code of ethics by fabricating stories and not coming even close to report the truth and be accurate.

I would have handled the situation just like Chuck Lane did. I would have been very suspicious, looked into the facts, and then when I found out the truth, I would have fired Glass. I also would have been very suspicious of the other stories that Stephen wrote and would have went through them. If I were Stephen Glass, I would never have fabricated stories like he did but if I did do that, I would not have kept the lies going once I was questioned about the accuracy and truth of one of my stories. Glass just kept going with the lies and I think that’s ultimately what led him to not only be fired but now currently struggling to pass the bar or continue on with his career.

This had a huge issue on journalism because it opened the eyes of many people. Glass was not the first reporter to be caught fabricating stories but he was definitely a lot worse than Janet Cooke. This not only made people wonder about if what they’re reading is the truth but it also probably changed the process of fact checking. I do believe that people are now becoming more and more accepting of slight fabrications but at this time that the Stephen Glass story came to the public’s eyes, it was really a huge issue and something that journalists were not allowed to be doing.

Sources:

SPJ lecture by Nicole Kraft

Shattered Glass, movie

In Nothing But the Truth, there were two different sides of what was right and what was wrong. The reporter, Rachel, stood on the side that revealing her source was wrong and that it was more ethical for her to not reveal her source, even if that meant going to jail. Rachel thought that revealing Erica’s daughter as the source who gave up Erica’s identity as a CIA agent was not ethical because she promised the little girl that she would not say anything. She believed that as a journalist, she should have the right to keep her sources private regardless of the Shield Law not protecting her.

The court and CIA believed that Rachel was wrong about keeping her source a secret and they believed that national security was more important than keeping her source private. They arrested her for contempt because she was not following court orders.

In class and in the lectures we watched, we said shield laws “protects journalists against the government requiring them to reveal confidential sources or other information.” However, Rachel was not protected by shield law because of the decision in Branzburg v. Hayes. This case was three cases merged into one (In Re Pappas and United States v. Caldwell joining Branzburg v. Hayes) and the decision was that journalists don’t have a constitutional right to refuse to reveal sources in court. Due to this precedent, Rachel did not have a right to refuse to reveal her source in court and this is why she was found to be in contempt and arrested when she did not follow court orders to reveal her source.

I think that if I was in Rachel’s position, I would have revealed the little girl as the source when they said that I could either reveal my source or go to jail. First of all, I would have done it because my child would be more important than another person’s child and I would not want my child to grow up without me being there. Secondly, I think that the CIA was more interested in the source because they thought it was someone who was in the CIA and giving away all of their information and so I do not think that anything would have happened to the little girl. I think the worst thing that would have happened is that Erica would have lost her job (which happened already before she was killed). I would have explained that Erica’s daughter overheard her parents arguing about the CIA and that it was not with intention that she found out about her mom being in the CIA. Even though the little girl told Rachel not to tell anyone, I think it would have been worth giving up the source and having someone mad at you for the rest of your life rather than the path Rachel chose.

The shield law is huge for journalists because it gives them more freedom to conceal their sources and it gives sources more freedom to share information without fear of their name being revealed. However, it also holds back journalists and sources in certain areas, such as threat to national security, and there’s no protection on a federal level. There also has been the creation of the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 by the Obama administration, which basically gives reporters the right to conceal their source’s identity and is an attempt to have a shield law protection on a federal level. These protections against revealing sources is huge on reporters and allows them to do their jobs fully and still have protection.

Sources:

Nicole Kraft Shield Laws Lectures (8.1)

Nothing But the Truth

The movie, Absence of Malice, is titled well because in the case it covers of Mr. Gallagher, there is no malice. This being said, does that mean that everything the reporters and government did along the way were ethical and/legal?

From Megan and that government’s side, if there was no malice, everything should be fine. They tried to get hold of Mr. Gallagher before printing the story, Megan spoke with her lawyer beforehand to make sure it was okay to run the story, and the investigation was a breaking story that people needed to hear about.

If you look at this movie from someone else’s perspective, it isn’t that clear that everything done was legal and ethical. First of all, Mr. Rosen left that government file for the investigation on his desk purposely for Megan to find and look at while he was out of the office. This is by no means legal and it is in fact a federal crime. Secondly, before running the story, Megan only calls Mr. Gallagher once to confirm the story. Although she called once and he didn’t answer, it’s questionable if this was ethical to post the story without talking to him to fact check it. Another thing that did not seem ethical was Megan writing the story about Gallagher’s friend and then leaving it open which led to someone else publishing it and then that ended up having the consequences of the woman taking her life. Even though it was not Megan’s fault the woman committed suicide, she knew that the woman did not want that story published because of her dad, her job and religion. One of the main obvious ethical issues is sleeping with your source. Megan becomes involved with Gallagher and sleeps with him which causes a conflict of interest.

With all of that being said, I have some thoughts on what I would do if I were Megan. I honestly would have opened that government file because I would be too curious and I would want to report the best news I could. I would  have also published the story when Megan did because the public does not like to wait on stories. Since Megan did not have any knowledge on any falsity in the investigation, I think she made the right call in publishing it. All that said, I would not have slept with Mr. Gallagher and I probably would have not published the story from Mr. Gallagher’s friend or I would have published it with an anonymous source.

The cases that associate with this are Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts and Associated Press v. Walker. These cases are important because one case was considered libel (Butts) and one was not (Walker). Due to Mr. Gallagher not being a public figure, malice was the only thing needed to be covered and as the title says, there was absence of Malice so this was not a libel case. Another important case I would bring up is Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc. because it did establish that citizens, who are not public officials, have more protection from libelous statements.

This changed journalism because I think the movie portrayed examples of what should and should not be done in journalism. It also showed people what malice means and helped people understand what it means to be libel and what protection public versus private citizens have.

Sources:

Nicole Kraft’s 3404 Comm lecture 6.1 “Libel”

Absence of Malice movie

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were reporters of the Washington Post who broke the biggest story in American Politics; the Watergate Scandal.

It’s safe to say one of the biggest issues was the anonymity of the sources, such as “Deep Throat.” Was it ethical to keep sources secret? One argument would say that many ethical issues came up with the reporting of the Watergate Scandal. The SPJ Code of Ethics says to “Seek truth and report it” meaning “Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information” (SPJ Code of Ethics). There’s not much doubt that Woodward and Bernstein wanted to get to the bottom of the Watergate issue and tell the truth but the issue is if they were honest and fair in gathering their information. It is evident that Woodward, as a newer journalist, did not want to push people or nag them as much as Bernstein did, although Woodward did push the lawyer in the court room by following up with questions after he said “no comment” (All the President’s Men). Their behavior with people is questionable. One that stood out is when they wanted a list of names from their co-workers ex-boyfriend and Woodward let it go when she said no but Bernstein pushed to get her to say yes and use him to get the list. Another part of the SPJ Code of Ethics is to “Minimize Harm” and I think Woodward and Bernstein’s behaviors, such as going constantly to that woman’s door even after she said she would get in trouble if she was caught talking to them, would be questionable.

Another argument would say that although some of their behaviors might have been questionable, they were still doing a ton of research, fact checking each other, and working as hard as possible without taking short cuts. Once they figured out that Watergate might have been more than just a break in for some cash, they started investigating. They knew that if what they had suspicions about were true and they could figure it out, they would solve a huge scandal and save a lot of people from losing money and being lied to for even longer. One could argue that Woodward and Bernstein were working for the greater good of the community and that the needs of many outweighed the few in their minds. This would be known as the utilitarianism theory, which was covered in lecture 4.1 (Journalism Ethics, Kraft).

Historically, “Watergate” had no significant meaning until this case. In class we talked a lot about the SPJ Code of Ethics and even though it was not fully established until after Watergate, these journalism ethics were still around when Woodward and Bernstein were investigating on the case. The First Amendment was obviously in place as well during this time, which included Freedom of Press and Speech. In my opinion, the case was handled correctly and I think that their actions were justifiable due to the work they put in and how much they did fact check and do their best to be truthful and honest to get down to something so huge.

Watergate had a huge impact on journalism because it brought to light to the field of journalism, it made people pay more attention to the government and what was published in newspapers, and Watergate was used to shape Acts later on down the road.

Sources:

http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp (SPJ Code of Ethics)

http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2012/06/watergate-burgard/ (How Watergate Changed Journalism)

All the President’s Men (movie)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFIICwhX3RI (4.1 Ethics of Journalism, Nicole Kraft)

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