This is Part I of a three-part series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
The other day, I went to the Society for Professional Journalists website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No, not just out of idle curiosity.\u00a0 But we’ll get to that a bit later.<\/p>\n
The SPJ has a page devoted to its ethics code<\/a>.\u00a0 The whole thing is worth a read; you can learn a lot about the core of the craft, as well as the things that real journalists are taught to strive for as they do their jobs.\u00a0 I was one of them, once; I did radio and freelance print news, way back when.\u00a0 I wasn’t very successful – I’m not doing it now! – but a couple of editors said I was good, or at least not bad,\u00a0at it.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n A couple of the items from the code caught my attention.\u00a0 I’m going to add emphasis here and there.\u00a0\u00a0You’ll see why, eventually:<\/p>\n \u2014 Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hm<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2014 Make certain<\/strong> that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent<\/strong>. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2014 Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events<\/strong>. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it.<\/p>\n \u2014 Never plagiarize<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There’s also an entire section entitled “Be Accountable”, which notes that “<\/span>Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other”, and tells them to:<\/p>\n \u2014 Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And finally, there’s this last bit here; journalists should…:<\/p>\n \u2014 Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So I guess today I’m going to be a journalist.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Local center-right bloggers have been piling on Minnesota Monitor<\/a>\u00a0since before the last election.\u00a0 The piliing-on stems, mainly, from a couple of things:\u00a0 the Monitor’s funding (from the “Center for Independent Media”, a DC-based non-profit that started life sharing offices with George Soros’ “Media Matters For America” attack-PR firm), and its staff (a group of leftybloggers with long track records of ideological snarkblogging).\u00a0<\/p>\n The Monitor – which calls its’ staff “Citizen Journalist Fellows” rather than “guys in their mom’s basement who blog in their pajamas” and pays them a stipend for blogging on schedule and to purported journalistic standards – has attempted to class up the joint a couple of different ways:<\/p>\n So it’s established; while the Monitor’s tone is explicitly “progressive”, they are slathering the veneer of journalism over the operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fair enough.\u00a0 Let’s run with that.\u00a0<\/p>\n We’ll come back to that, too.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Bloggers, of course, have no published<\/em> code of ethics.\u00a0 But among reputable bloggers – or bloggers who strive <\/em>to be reputable – there are at least a few generally-accepted standards.\u00a0 Plagiarism, of course, is very bad form, and can be punished mercilessly (anyone remember “The Agonist<\/a>?”).\u00a0 Another one – prominently label any corrections that are germane to the fundamental facts of a story – ties in closely with one of the articles in the SPJ and <\/em>the Minnesota Monitor’s codes of conduct: the injunction to “Admit mistakes and correct them promptly”.\u00a0 It’s why whenever a good blogger changes a fundamental fact in their story, they’ll put something at the bottom of the posting.\u00a0 For example…:<\/p>\n “UPDATE:\u00a0 Commenter BillVanNassouwe points out that Councilman Royce was convicted of shoplifting, not high treason.\u00a0 I’ve changed the story above.\u00a0 Sorry about the bobble”.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s just good blogging manners, along with that whole “journalistic ethics” thing.<\/p>\n Oh, and one other thing; if you pull a quote from an online source, you link to it.\u00a0 If you don’t, it is – at the very least\u00a0– a gaffe.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n On Monday, the Monitor ran this story on its front page<\/a>, under Jeff Fecke’s byline…<\/p>\n …well, no.\u00a0 That’s not exactly what happened.\u00a0 Let’s construct a timeline.<\/p>\n Note that at no time did the posting explictly say “some facts in this story were changed”.\u00a0 No update notice was posted.\u00a0 The casual reader\u00a0 might never know any part of the story’s content had changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n And what happened?<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Fecke changed three words.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Three friggin’ words, Berg?\u00a0 This is a scandal?\u00a0 Criminy”.<\/p>\n Of course it’s not a scandal.\u00a0 Nobody’s that anal-retentive, right?\u00a0 Adding two lousy words is hardly a journalistic faux-pas; it barely qualifies as a blogging flub.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, it would have been a better thing had Fecke noted in his post that these corrections, piddling as they seem, had been made.\u00a0 But it’s no big deal, right?<\/p>\n Right.<\/p>\n Until you dig behind the corrections.<\/p>\n We’ll get to that in our next installment, Part II, on Friday.<\/p>\n \u00a0The following is a direct copy and paste of a PDF of the Minnesota Monitor’s original piece on this subject:<\/p>\n With the DFL and GOP increasingly likely to move the 2008 caucuses to “Super Duper Tuesday” on February 5, DFL senate campaigns expressed general support for the idea. And none of the campaigns indicated the date would change their decision to abide by the endorsement process.<\/p>\n Leslie Sandberg, communications director for the Mike Ciresi campaign, issued a statement to Minnesota Monitor saying, “We’re going to abide by the endorsement, and our campaign looks forward to having many supporters show up whether the caucuses are held in February or March.” Ciresi had previously stated the campaign could reconsider their decision to abide if the date was moved.<\/p>\n Jess McIntosh, communications director for the Franken campaign, was equally positive. “While we can’t believe that no one has come up with a better name than `Super-Duper Tuesday,’ we’re glad Minnesotans may be able to be a part of it. And we’re excited about increased participation in the caucuses.”<\/p>\n The Bob Olson campaign did not immediately have an official statement, but campaign manager Eric Mitchell said that the move was “good for Minnesotans,” and that it would hopefully increase participation in the caucuses.<\/p>\n The Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer campaign could not be immediately reached for comment.<\/p>\n Minnesota appears likely to become the 24th state to hold its primary or caucus on February 5, which is rapidly becoming a de facto national primary. While the state has not officially moved the caucus date, both DFL and Minnesota GOP leaders have indicated support for the switch, with GOP chair Ron Carey saying there is a “90 percent probability” of a change, and the DFL already giving preliminary approval to the plan.<\/p>\n Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat, has said his office will facilitate a change, saying “We’re here to be helpful to the parties if the parties want to move in that direction.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is Part I of a three-part series.\u00a0 ———- The other day, I went to the Society for Professional Journalists website.\u00a0 No, not just out of idle curiosity.\u00a0 But we’ll get to that a bit later. The SPJ has a page devoted to its ethics code.\u00a0 The whole thing is worth a read; you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,31,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-blogs","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49897,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/49897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Mike<\/strike> Ciresi campaign, issued a statement to Minnesota Monitor saying, “We’re going to abide by the endorsement, and our campaign looks forward to having many supporters show up whether the caucuses are held in February or March”.\u00a0 OK – good edit, removing a colloquialism that any editor would have insisted be cut.\u00a0<\/li>\n