Tattletales: News media love to call each other out

Sunday marked the final broadcast of CNN’s 30-year-old news media criticism show called “Reliable Sources.” The reasons for the cancellation aren’t clear, but the network’s new CEO has said he wants to cut back on opinion, re-emphasize straight reporting and, notably, attract conservative viewers who have turned off CNN.

Good luck with that last part, fella.

There’s still plenty of press criticism out there from politicians and other partisans, but less and less from professional reporters who are designated to do so. In addition to losing “Reliable Sources,” the job of “public editor” – a newsroom reporter given the authority and independence to listen to audience complaints and write about their own organization’s failings – has almost disappeared.

All of this is concerning because the press is an influential institution that needs to be held publicly accountable for its considerable shortcomings. But I’m not going to get too concerned. That’s because a strong ethic of “self-policing” remains within the industry. In other words, journalists like to rat each other out.

Some national news outlets, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and Politico, still employ media beat reporters or commentators. There also are industry watchdog groups, such as Columbia Journalism Review and Media Matters for America. And you can find plenty of individual blogs. (Yes, the Arenblog is somewhere on that list.) I especially like this one and this one.

Mainly, though, watchdogging of journalism comes when one medium reports on another, exposing inaccuracy, conflicts of interest, editorial timidity and a host of other misdeeds.

One of the most notorious scandals in journalism history began in 2003 when The Washington Post wrote a story headlined, “N.Y. Times Article Bears Similarities to Texas Paper’s.” It ended up with The New York Times uncovering pervasive fraud and plagiarism by one of its own reporters, Jayson Blair.

A few other, random examples:

• The New York Times used video content analysis to document the racism and fear-mongering of Fox News talk show host Tucker Carlson.

• Buzzfeed exposed conflicts of interest by New York Times columnist David Brooks, who wrote about subjects in which he had undisclosed financial ties. He cut those ties and the newspaper added editor’s notes to some past columns.

• The Washington Post raised accuracy questions about a well-read story published by The Atlantic on rich, overzealous parents using athletics to gain their children’s admission to Ivy League schools, leading to a retraction.

• The military newspaper Stars and Stripes cast doubt on a 12-year-old story told multiple times by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams that his helicopter was hit by enemy fire in Iraq. The network suspended him for six months and he never returned to that position.

(Careful readers will note that all but one of these examples led to consequences. Fox News and Carlson? Zilch.)

This type of self-monitoring happens on the local level, too. One example: A deep dive by Los Angeles Magazine into problems with The Los Angeles Times’ editorial leadership at the time. Local “alternative” publications often like to criticize the dominant local media, which are fair game.

All this public finger pointing seems noncollegial and harmful to the reputation of the industry. You rarely see this sort of recrimination in many other fields of work. But keeping quiet is dishonorable, and in the long run truth and public trust in journalism are better served by open self-examination, no matter how embarrassing.

Alabama Media Group gets into the digital subscription business

Two weeks ago, USA Today announced that visitors to its website would have to pay a monthly fee to access the best of its content, becoming the last national daily newspaper to stop offering all of its work for free online.

This is a trend among daily newspapers of all sizes. One study from 2019 (latest I could find) reported that 76% of the U.S. dailies surveyed had a “paywall” of some kind on their websites. That number was 60% just two years prior.

In May 2020, when the Alabama Media Group was seeking voluntary payments to support its journalism, I offered the belief that AMG probably would put most of its digital content behind a paywall someday, as the majority of the websites of parent company Advance Local have done with at least some of their work since then. But that hasn’t happened with AMG (full disclosure: I used to work there). Full access to AL.com remains free.

What has happened is that, for the first time, AMG is selling some exclusive digital content.

The company this year launched “The Lede” in each of its major markets – Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile. (“Lede” is a journalist’s weird spelling of the first paragraph of a story.)

The Lede is a daily digital product delivered by email or accessible by computer and mobile app. It contains news enterprise stories, recent breaking stories, features, sports stories, commentaries, obits, games and puzzles. Statewide topics appear in all three markets, but the top stories, usually emphasizing a local issue, are distinct.

“The Lede is a way for us to bring back a daily touchpoint for local coverage,” AMG Vice President of Content Kelly Scott wrote in an email. “…The Lede allows us to go deeper on topics that matter to residents in each community.”

On Monday, for instance, The Lede cover story for Mobile was about oil and gas lease money for the Gulf Coast. The Huntsville cover focused on the city’s transit system as a transportation alternative. Birmingham carried a cover story about age trends in Jefferson County.

From my reading of The Lede for Birmingham over a few weeks, the cover story and a few other items are exclusive to The Lede each day, meaning they aren’t available for free on AL.com. The majority of the content can be found on the site. But industry research indicates that many readers like the value of having news delivered directly to them in organized fashion instead of searching on sites that are ever-changing and often user unfriendly.

Cost of The Lede is $9.99 per month, a typical rate for such a product. It’s also included with the purchase of a Birmingham, Huntsville or Mobile print subscription.

News organizations are notorious for creating new products simply by demanding more work from existing personnel or by taking personnel from existing products. But AMG has invested in The Lede. It added a reporter dedicated to the new venture in each market. It also hired Kevin Scarbinsky as an exclusive, all-markets freelance sports columnist. (My former colleague is a high-value asset, in my opinion.)

While The Lede obviously carries some stories that otherwise would appear on AL.com, the website is essentially unaffected. AMG and other news media companies that still want digital advertising as one of their significant revenue sources know that requiring payment for content – whether by moving it to a new paid product or by putting up a site paywall – will decrease the web traffic that advertisers want.

There’s another issue here. Paywalls deprive people who can’t or don’t want to pay of vital civic information. It’s true that, except for a decade or so of free online journalism at the start of this century, news has always had a price. And the study I mentioned earlier says concern about paywalls and informed citizens is “overblown for now,” mainly because a slight majority of the 212 outlets it surveyed across seven countries remain free. But where paywalls exist, I think it’s a valid concern.

Scott is aware of this issue. She says local news that readers need for civic participation will remain on AL.com. “We believe it’s important from an equity standpoint and to make sure citizens have access to the reporting they need to be civically engaged where they live,” she said.

Charging for news helps to financially support the continuation of that news. It’s the increasingly necessary trend. But hallelujahs to any outlet that can give it to their community for free.

Publication frequency keeps dropping nationally

While we’re talking about AMG and Advance Local, I came across some interesting facts about the publication frequency of U.S. newspapers. Back in 2012, Advance changed The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and The Mobile Press-Register from daily publication to three days a week. (It also reduced frequency of other properties at other times, with the first being Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2009.) The question then was whether this was a foresightful survival strategy that other companies would copy, or the short-sighted, greed-motivated actions of an outlier.

A decade later, 40 of the 100 largest circulation papers in the country deliver a print edition six or fewer times a week, according to a report released three weeks ago by Northwestern University professor Penny Abernathy. Of those 40, 11 publish a print edition one or two or times a week. The Tampa Bay Times, Salt Lake Tribune and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette are examples. Many smaller dailies have also reduced frequency. It’s a trend that began with the recession of 2008, the report says.

Every market has its own peculiarities, but these facts suggest to me that most other news companies to this point have maintained greater faith in the economics of print – or more tolerance for falling numbers – than Advance did. But for business trends, a decade is not long enough to draw conclusions. I anticipate a continuing loss of print days until some unpredictable point in time when newspapers are gone.

Sick and tired of all the bad news? You're not alone

“I can’t even.”

That was a common remark on social media in the wake of discovery that a mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, left a 2-year-old boy orphaned. He was found wandering in the street. “Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon?” he later asked his grandfather.

I can’t even.

Of course, what’s the unspoken part of that sentence?

“I can’t even comprehend something so awful.”

“I can’t even imagine what life will be like for him.”

“I can’t even believe we live in a society where that could happen.”

All of the above.

And for some people: “I can’t even bring myself to read the news these days.”

It’s bad out there: COVID, the Ukraine war, mass killings, political insanity, add your own. Many people decide they just don’t want to read or watch it anymore. They engage in “news avoidance.”

According to a Reuters Institute survey released last month, 42% of U.S. respondents said they often or sometimes actively avoid the news. Of those, 49% said they did so because consuming news “had a negative effect on their mood.”

Other popular reasons, among all respondents across six continents, were too much news about politics and COVID (43%) and getting “worn out” by the amount of news (29%).

A study published in the academic journal Digital Journalism in 2022 found that in the U.S., “burn-out or exhaustion related to news consumption was mostly due to the political atmosphere after the presidential election in 2016.”

It added, more broadly, that “interviewees expressed the news being ‘too much,’ referring to the excess of negative (mood) the news was producing, feeling like it was more than they could handle – intolerable, even. Media’s tendency to focus on negative news seems to be one of the main factors that helps to explain news avoidance.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

News organizations obviously don’t want people tuning them out, but what to do about this?

One good suggestion is to focus on solutions to the problems that create bad news. Report on ideas and actions that have been shown to work, perhaps somewhere else in the world, or that at least offer some hope. Unfortunately, listening to decision makers deny common-sense solutions can be infuriating, as well. I, for instance, am a steadfast news avoider whenever Mitch McConnell begins to talk about mass shootings.

Some balancing of content is a good idea, too. That means looking for stories that can inspire and uplift. There are heroes in the world and they’re newsworthy. I used to scoff at newsrooms that formalize and label “good news” content because often the topic choices are unexceptional and boosterish. I’m less of a skeptic today.

One idea that the news media don’t need to consider: Downplaying the bad news. Yeah, I’m sick of all of it, too, but reality is reality. We can talk about the harm of sensationalizing, but resolving issues starts with awareness, attention and, yes, some degree of disgust. We don’t need to avoid that.

Emotions of abortion debate put newswriters in a language jungle

I don’t know how journalists writing about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs abortion decision manage to meet their deadlines. They have to stop practically every other sentence to think and avoid words and phrases that are loaded like landmines.

I can’t think of any other issue in which the language has become so politicized. Journalists writing news stories seek truthful characterizations while steering clear of perceived partisanship. This may be impossible here.

How, for instance, should they describe the two sides in the abortion debate? It’s a lesson in media “framing.” Many news organizations, such as The Associated Press and NPR, do not use “pro-life” unless in a name or a quote because it’s inaccurate spin adopted by those advocates to sound better. And it suggests, of course, that the other side is pro-death.

That side is not even “pro-abortion.” They don’t endorse abortion; they just want the option available. Yet many news outlets don’t use the more accurate “pro-choice” label. Instead, the most common phrasing is “abortion rights” advocates. The other viewpoint most commonly gets described as “anti-abortion” or as abortion rights opponents. But proponents of that viewpoint don’t like either of those labels. In the first instance, they prefer to be for something rather than against something. In the second instance, they argue that use of “abortion rights” (or “reproductive rights”) focuses on the pregnant person and ignores the developing human life that also has a stake in the debate.

Speaking of which, what’s the right wording for that developing human life? Is it a “life” or not? Is it an “unborn baby”? One side says such wording bestows a humanness that isn’t warranted. News media prefer the scientifically accurate word  “fetus.” The other side argues that denies humanness and sanitizes the acts required to terminate a pregnancy.

Journalists shouldn’t sanitize. That’s why many abortion rights supporters wish the news media would go further than describing the Supreme Court’s decision as simply voiding the constitutional right to abortion. Call it what it is, they say: “forced childbirth” or “government-mandated childbirth” or “denial of bodily autonomy.”

And the justices who did it? Reporters like to call them “conservative” or “Republican.” Those are safe words, but do they rise to the occasion? Are additional adjectives such as “radical” or “right wing” political or honest? (Both, maybe.) Every news outlet must decide. Sometimes writers label the justices of the majority as constitutional “originalists” or “textualists.” That may be granting them a consistent legal logic that isn’t there.

In states where abortion becomes illegal, there’s valid concern about women resorting to “back-alley abortions,” a buzz phrase often used by abortion rights supporters that suggests dangerous procedures and criminality. Physicians for Reproductive Health, which advocates for the option of abortion, recommends the wording “self-managed abortion care,” which recognizes safe abortion by self-administered pill.

It’s a language jungle out there: Words packed with bias and politics and, even worse for journalism, words that are euphemisms. A divided, hyperpartisan audience is ready to pounce. Journalists must engage in conscientious but unfearing selections.

But let’s also acknowledge this: As important as language is, the journalism that the Supreme Court ruling calls for requires much more than making the right word choices. It requires coverage of the severe issues the court has created, such as extent of state restrictions, surveillance and enforcement methods, options for restoring rights, and the social, economic and psychological impacts on women and their children, especially those of color. There remains room to continue the debate about the morality of abortion, weighed against social consequences. And more broadly, there are valid concerns about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and about other long-held rights that seem at risk.

The coverage should be unending and unafraid. Those might be the best word choices of all.

Policing the truth: Yes, the cops might be lying

Whenever a large-scale crime of violence grabs national media attention, it’s gut wrenching to watch those interviews with grieving families and witnesses. It’s only natural to think, “Leave those poor people alone.”

But reporters have reasons for doing it. Here’s one: To try to figure out if the police are lying to everyone.

We are seeing this now with the mass murders at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Interviews and social media videos have shown that early law enforcement accounts of quick confrontation and bravery by officers were bogus.

News media have a history of trusting the public statements of officialdom, especially law enforcement (I say this as a former police beat reporter for all of 10 months). Deference to authority is unwise for journalists but often an enticing trap when those agencies provide a fount of metrics-pumping news stories. There are practical considerations, too. As a reporter, you need information fast, you have immediate access to police sources, and police have the power of investigation that adds to the presumed credibility of their statements.

I believe law enforcement accounts of most events are truthful based on their knowledge at the time. But if an event involves law enforcement itself – a shooting by police, a police chase, a confrontational arrest, a crisis response – reliability diminishes. A lot. The frequency may be undeterminable, but authorities will lie to protect themselves. Could be a few officers writing false reports. Could be a chief or a sheriff knowingly making false public statements.

From one infamous police news release: “(A suspect) was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. … He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.” Recognize it? Probably not. It’s the original police description of the George Floyd case.

Some other false accounts of citizen deaths at the hands of police also got exposed: Adam Toledo. Daniel Prude. Breonna Taylor. Walter Scott. Eric Garner.

At least in high-profile cases, truth usually emerges eventually, sometimes because of media persistence, sometimes because of police or bystander video, and sometimes because internal affairs investigators did their jobs. In many other cases, though, journalists may not have the time or inclination to keep digging, leaving the public with only an official narrative that may or may not reflect what really happened.

Of course, accountability for law enforcement agencies means more than just ensuring the truth of public statements in major cases. True accountability means journalists make it a priority to constantly monitor practices and performance.

Kelly McBride, a former police reporter who is now a commentator on media ethics for The Poynter Institute, believes police reporting in general needs an overhaul. Most reporters are “stenographers” for police departments, she told a Poynter seminar on Zoom last year. She urges journalists to focus on police performance, including regularly seeking department records on citizen complaints, internal disciplinary actions, crime trends, and case clearance rates.

In the same vein, journalists should test police versions of major events by seeking out witnesses and other evidence. Laws that shield police records including 911 calls, dashboard and body camera video, and radio transmission transcripts pose  unjustifiable obstacles. (Alabama’s Supreme Court issued a terrible ruling last year.)

On a daily basis, law enforcement officers risk their lives to protect the community, and they fulfill that public service in ways large and small without headlines. But they’re powerful and capable of occasional harm, too. There are fair questions about systemic problems in policing. And sometimes, as in Uvalde, there are failures with catastrophic consequences. These realities demand skepticism and accountability, not stenography.

D.C. dinner of journos, pols and celebs was black tie and a black eye

BARACK OBAMA AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ ASSOCIATION DINNER IN 2013.

The news media that cover the White House have a really great plan for combating the common public perception that they are elitist and out of touch with the rest of the world.

They hosted a black-tie dinner in Washington to schmooze and hobnob with government leaders and politicians. Really.

The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner returned Saturday night after a two-year absence because of the pandemic. The gala event featuring Beltway journalists, leading political figures and celebrities presents such a terrible picture.

The message to media consumers (and haters) says this: The D.C. press and politicians are quite cozy, actually, and what we see 364 days a year is just a game they play to fulfill prescribed roles and maintain access. It makes one wonder if the independent and sometimes adversarial relationship that’s needed to produce accountability journalism truly exists in untempered form.

The event, which began in 1921, does good in raising money for journalism scholarships and calling attention to various threats to journalists and the First Amendment. But they don’t need to invite the people they cover to make that happen.

Issues with the White House press corps may run deeper than this event. Politico published an article on Friday quoting anonymous White House reporters saying they’re bored with the Biden Administration and long for the newsmaking chaos and leaks of the Trump Administration. And that their beat is no longer the big career boost it once was. 

Not exactly the frame of mind we need from the watchdogs of the executive branch.

White House journalists seem obsessed with their status. The dinner shows that, as do their frequent complaints when presidents don’t hold enough formal press conferences. I think that gripe stems less from an inability to get answers – because press secretaries can give answers – and more from wanting a president to validate the press’ importance. (And for some, to be seen on TV asking a tough question of the president of the United States.)

Certainly presidents ought to have to answer questions, but who cares if it’s at a press conference or while walking somewhere. There’s a lot of journalistic talent in the briefing room. I’ve always thought that instead of the horde, a couple of pool reporters could adequately handle a presidential press conference while all the other journalists should go talk to sources, dig into records, or visit communities affected by government actions. Because that’s how better journalism happens. 

State sports writing legends: We all kinda look alike, don't we?

If you happened to visit the recently announced list of The 50 Legends of the Alabama Sports Writers Association*, you saw a scroll of outstanding journalists who witnessed and captured many of the greatest sports moments of our lives.

But also: A bunch of white guys.

The list of 50 includes one Black journalist (Rubin Grant) and one female journalist (Kathy Jo Lumpkin). Whose fault is that?

Considering the ridiculously non-diverse pool it had to choose from, not the selection committee’s. (But I am dumbfounded by its omission of my 28-year colleague Solomon Crenshaw Jr., a constant ASWA award winner.)

OK, then whose?

That would be mine.  And every other hiring editor in every other state newspaper sports department for the past 50 years.

It’s true we didn’t get a lot of applications from Black or female sports writers, but that’s no excuse. Recruitment of under-represented groups should have been standard practice.

Why does it matter?  Well, it’s about impossible for any news organization to fulfill its commitment to the community it covers, or to even understand the community it covers, if it has no internal voices from that community.  I know, for instance, of several cases in which a female sports journalist might have said, “Hey, let’s not run that sympathetic profile of this athlete accused of rape.” 

This state has had – and still does have – a number of good Black and female sports reporters. But in the past, these reporters usually were freelance writers rather than staff writers, or didn’t stay long in the state, or, amazingly, got laid off. Today, representation is proportionally better in TV sports departments than at print/digital outlets. 

In a report released in September 2021, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport surveyed more than 100 newspapers and websites around the country and found that 77 percent of sports reporters were white and 85 percent were male. The numbers were similar for sports editors.

This is dismal, but actually represents slow progress. Nationally, female beat reporters are no longer an oddity (despite what Cam Newton might think), and the two best sports commentators in the business are Christine Brennan of USA Today and Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post.

Here and elsewhere, it’s possible to do better. Mentoring and scholarship programs offered to college students can work (the majority of my sports writing students are female and my classes always have some degree of Black representation). Early identification and recruitment of prospective hires also works, whether it’s a college journalist or someone working at a smaller outlet.

I’m optimistic that the next group of 50 Legends in 2072 is going to look a whole lot different.

 * Disclosure for those of you who don’t click the list: I am on it.

Thanks, but I don’t need Alabama politicians to tell me how to do my job

not my classroom. and that’s not critical race theory on the screens. though some people probably think it is.

I mentioned CRT in a class the other day. But I am not worried about getting fired. My students promised that if they ever bump into a state legislator, they’ll say I was talking about Customer Relations Training. Tee-hee.

The Alabama Senate is about to consider a bill, a version of which passed the House two weeks ago, that in essence prohibits or restrains the teaching of Critical Race Theory and other “divisive concepts” related to race and gender at all levels of education. This is a solution that has no problem.

The potential for unjustifiable interference with academic freedom looms larger for secondary education, but I wish to focus here on higher education, where professors across the state have protested this bill and its earlier versions.

The bill itemizes “divisive concepts,” and states that a public university may discipline or fire violators. 

As evidence that the sponsoring white Republican legislators know they are in dangerous constitutional and political territory, the proposed law as it relates to higher education is heavily caveated. The University of Alabama and other state universities have pushed for and achieved language changes, but of course they have to let the Legislature pass some kind of law like this because institutions of higher education are loathe to push back too hard against the people who decide their funding.

Among the caveats for colleges:

• The bill allows discussion of the listed divisive concepts as long as: students aren’t “compelled” to agree with them; the instruction occurs “in an objective manner”; and “the institution expressly makes clear that it does not endorse these divisive concepts.”

• The bill allows the teaching of topics and historical events “in a historically accurate context.”

Among the listed divisive concepts is this one: “That this state or the United States is inherently racist or sexist.” Not sure what “inherently” means. Nobody’s telling students that Alabama’s air and water make them racist. But the idea that the institutions and laws of Alabama have systemically perpetuated racism over time – Critical Race Theory, in essence – stands upon a mountain of evidence. I mean, there’s no way to spin the state constitution of 1901 as anything else. This seems like a good and necessary topic for the classroom.

Another divisive concept: “That an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, sex, or religion, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, sex, or religion.” I dunno. I think the issue of reparations would be worthy of a spot on a syllabus.

If this bill becomes law, I could broach such subjects with students, but I’d feel truly perplexed about how to portray, for instance, white supremacy “in an objective manner.” And the requirement to say I don’t endorse a divisive concept? I feel a case of convenient forgetfulness coming on.

It’s fair to ask whether the majority of the Alabama Legislature has a clue as to what goes on in a college classroom. I won’t argue that CRT and similar topics aren’t being taught, because I know they are – in scattered, appropriate courses at UA and other places. But professors are not indoctrinating their students. We can’t even get them to learn the syllabus. Nor are we compelling assent, which to me means threatening disagreeing students with a lowered grade. Exposing students to new ideas and challenging existing ones falls many steps short of forced agreement.

One of my department colleagues, Dr. A.J. Bauer, teaches media law and his courses include some topics that might fall within the bill’s targeted concepts. He’s not trying to indoctrinate anyone, and doesn’t think he could anyway.

“Students, and especially conservative students, have no issue playing devil’s advocate or pushing back on lessons that don’t fit their preconceived notions about the world. Assent isn’t even the goal — critical thinking and active engagement with the course material and themes is.”

Bauer believes the bill is “extremely vague” and likely the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually rule such a law unconstitutional. In the meantime, though, “it will result in a chilling effect, where teachers and professors will self-censor when discussing matters of race, gender, and sexuality – if they choose to discuss them at all – for fear that a frivolous and unwarranted student complaint will result in their termination. This is likely the desired outcome of the bill’s sponsors.”

They say it isn’t, of course. But the other political factor to consider here is that Alabama’s jackass of an attorney general would probably love to yank a lib professor into court to further his political ambitions. In the same vein, multiple conservative groups around the U.S. have encouraged students to secretly record their professors. 

If we ever get to the point that teachers are scared of their students, that would be as destructive to good education as anything I can think of. It would be quittin’ time for a lot of educators.

In the smaller picture, I view this bill as political pandering. In the bigger picture, it’s an attempt to prevent educators from merely offering ideas that threaten the demographic groups that traditionally dominate politics and economics. Societies can’t progress when younger generations aren’t allowed to think about failures of the older ones, so they can do better. The state must let higher education play its role in this process.

The state should understand, too, that college students can handle divisive concepts, and they have the brains and free will to reject what they hear. For all the rightful alarm over infringement on the academic freedom of faculty, I’m even more troubled by the way this legislation insults my students.

Photos we don't want to see, but maybe should

in this 2019 photo, kaylee tyner, then a student at columbine high school and the founder of the “my last shot” campaign, shows the sticker on the back of her id card: “In the event that I die from gun violence please publicize the photo of my death.”

We spent part of Monday’s media ethics class talking about dead bodies.

The topic was prompted by some gut-wrenching social media photos of fatalities from Russia’s special operation to liberate Ukraine. (That’s how I’m referring to Vladimir Putin’s immoral invasion of a sovereign nation just in case Putin reads the Arenblog and decides to poison my Diet Coke.)

My very smart students nicely framed this longstanding dilemma of whether and when to publish such photos. Respect for the victims, compassion for victims’ families, and the danger of exposing audience to upsetting images all dictate not to publish. But showing the truth of war – so that citizens of the world might insist their nations never engage in it – demands no withholding.

The New York Times picked its side of one such debate on Monday. It published the most awful of these recent photos – the bodies of a Ukrainian mother and her two children killed by Russian mortar fire as they fled from fighting – at the top of Page 1A of its print edition and on its website homepage. (I learned this after class and decided to write about it. I don’t pick class discussion topics based on blog subjects.)

The Times’ director of photography cited “our duty as journalists to show our readers an unvarnished and accurate account of the world’s events, which are sometimes very difficult to see but necessary to understand.” (Warning: If you click the link above or some of the links below, you’re agreeing to view disturbing images.) The Times photographer called her photo “disrespectful” to the Ukrainian family, but she considered it more important to impactfully document a war crime. That’s especially persuasive considering Russia’s denials of such crimes. Other journalists mostly praised The Times on social media.

There’s actually a long media history of photos of dead people that drew vast public attention. That’s not to say they all changed public opinion or brought about new public policy. Among them: 

• Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, killed by racists in Mississippi in 1955

• Kent State student Jeffrey Miller, shot by the Ohio National Guard at a war protest in 1970

• Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned during his family’s attempt to escape fighting in Syria by sailing to Greece in 2015

• Oscar and Valeria Ramirez, a Salvadoran father and 2-year-old daughter who were seeking asylum in the US but drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande River into Texas in 2019

Also in 2019, The Times published a death scene photo from a terrorist attack at a luxury hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The Times mostly caught flak from critics who claimed the newspaper never would have done the same for a similar tragedy in the US. Indeed, the many American mass killings perpetrated with guns have seemed off limits for that kind of coverage by the press. Reason No. 36 why gun control legislation goes nowhere.

I think younger generations are more OK with explicit visuals than older ones. Most of the students in our conversation this week saw justification. Virtually every student of mine who has chosen this issue for an ethics paper in the past few years concluded the same.

In 2019, a student at Columbine High School started a campaign called “My Last Shot.” Participants placed a sticker on their identification cards: “In the event that I die from gun violence please publicize the photo of my death. #MyLastShot.”

One of my department colleagues, Dr. Kaitlin C. Miller, has published research related to graphic images. She said the decision of whether to publish is never clear cut.

In theory, she said, this “taking” of intimate moments from people’s lives, including their deaths, is justified “for a greater good. To show truth about the world. To possibly evoke emotion and even positive change.” But the evidence shows that doesn’t happen. 

“Sharing graphic images like that of killed Ukrainians does little to evoke change but does much to capitalize on the pain and suffering of others. This taking, thusly, seems unjustified,” Miller said.

SCREENSHOT OF TWITTER REACTION FROM A MEDIAITE.COM STORY. to see the photo, click the link in the fourth paragraph of this post..

Usually, a photo of death must meet certain criteria for an editor to deem it shareable: Not a closeup; no visible faces (The Times’ Ukraine photo Monday was an exception); and minimal blood and gore. Think about that last standard. Not unreasonable, and it keeps the complaints down, but it backpedals from complete truth.

The Ukraine government has held nothing back in its anti-Putin persuasion campaign of posting photos of dead, recognizable Russian soldiers on the internet and social media. The American press has mostly refrained from repeating these.

For the press, the particular communication platform matters. The Times’ decision Monday was debate worthy not just because of the decision to publish, but also because placement in such a prominent spot in the print edition and on the website homepage inevitably meant exposure to readers who didn’t intentionally seek out the photo and might not have wanted to see it. With digital platforms, at least, publishers have the option of a warning label and requiring visitors to consciously click a link. That seems responsible. Yet it also allows much of the public to avoid confronting a reality that we’d like to pretend does not exist.

The sanitized but still powerful visual journalism that emerges from war and other tragedy effectively creates necessary outrage. But perhaps because of the tenacious social and political obstacles to change, or because of the scope of the devastation, we feel helpless in turning outrage into corrective action. I don’t know that unmitigated photos and videos would change that.

I’d like to think that we don’t really need to see it in its most brutal form to understand the human atrocity that is war and violence. I may be wrong.

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“In the past when technology made it difficult for people around the world to see images of war, a single photo may have had more power then. Now, with the flooding of images and information, to take such intimate moments of death and share them with the public is often gratuitous.”

— UA Professor Dr. Kaitlin C. Miller

Public figures race to court with bogus grievances (and they know it)

Sarah Palin: I think I’ll file a libel lawsuit against a news organization that’s so legally flimsy that both the judge and jury will decide against me.

Kyle Rittenhouse: Hold my beer.

It’s becoming fashionable for individuals on the far right of the political spectrum who believe they are the unfair targets of the news media to engage in defamation litigation that’s purely grandstanding and harassment.

the march 29, 1960 advertisement in the new york times that sparked a landmark libel lawsuit by a montgomery, alabama, government official.

Palin, a former Republican vice presidential nominee, unsuccessfully sued The New York Times over an editorial that wrongly stated that a campaign advertisement by her political action committee had prompted a man to kill multiple people at a political rally in Arizona six years earlier.

Then Rittenhouse, the acquitted killer of two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, announced this week on various media forums that he plans to sue selected celebrities and news organizations for their negative coverage of him, including labeling him as a “murderer.” He’s launching “The Media Accountability Project” to raise money for his efforts. This is so heroic that I have tears in my eyes.

Donald Trump and former Republican congressman Devin Nunes are others on this list. Lawyers, as officers of the court, are supposed to prevent misuse of the court system, but the politically motivated ones won’t. This is despite knowing how remarkably difficult it is for a public official or public figure (such as a celebrity) to win a libel suit. 

To do so, a public official or figure must prove that the accused publication acted with “actual malice.” That’s a really terrible name, because it implies personal animosity. A good plaintiff’s lawyer would certainly love to show personal animosity in court, but that’s not the definition. The standard of actual malice means the defendant published a false and damaging statement either knowing that it was false or showing “reckless disregard” for whether the statement was true or false. Making a mistake due to simple negligence is not actual malice.

This standard of proof arose from a court case that started in Alabama in 1960. A group of civil rights activists placed a full-page advocacy ad in The New York Times that contained minor factual errors. Southern politicians at the time liked to use litigation to try to impede the Northern press that was reporting on the civil rights movement, and Montgomery police commissioner L.B. Sullivan took exception to an inaccurate description of his officers’ actions toward protesting students at Alabama State University. He sued The Times. 

Under existing law, Sullivan needed to prove only that the ad contained errors and that they damaged his reputation. A Montgomery County jury awarded Sullivan $500,000, a huge amount for that era, and the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the verdict. The U.S. Supreme heard the case on appeal, and in 1964 it created the actual malice standard for libel against public officials and reversed the verdict. So New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, one of the landmark cases of press protection, didn’t even involve a reporter writing a news story.

The reversal was unanimous. Two justices even argued that the actual malice standard offered too little protection.

More recent SCOTUS cases that came from Alabama – Shelby County v. Holder, McCutcheon v. FEC – have damaged the quality of democracy in this country. NYT vs. Sullivan enhanced it. 

News outlets that fear legal liability arising from unintentional errors might shy away from tough reporting on powerful people who owe accountability to the public.

“Without it, there would be a chilling effect on speech from the media – a self-censorship that in the end would be far more harmful to the public at large than anything the media might say about a public figure or official,” said my department colleague, Dr. Dianne Bragg, who teaches media law.

At the same time, the ethical press doesn’t treat the actual malice standard as a license for sloppy journalism. And Bragg believes “any serious malfeasance on the part of the media can result in a successful case.”

Despite all the press freedom it has brought – probably because of it, actually – the Sullivan precedent may be in danger. Some conservative judges, including two on the U.S. Supreme Court, have publicly expressed interest in revisiting (translation: trashing) the 1964 ruling. Educated speculation is that Palin brought her lawsuit with the intent of giving a friendly high court a chance to lower the bar for media culpability.

If that happens, Bragg does not expect a neutral re-examination of legal foundations. She thinks some justices will be guided by their animosity toward the news media.

This is likely. It would be a natural move for conservatives in power who see the good work of the (usually) liberal press as a threat or, at least, a nuisance. It has to chafe them that an establishment institution like the U.S. Supreme Court gave the press such a formidable shield that allows it to thrive.

“Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open...”

— Justice William Brennan, writing the Supreme Court's opinion in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)