In the scenario we were given on sports reporting, we were asked if it is okay to go on a date with an athlete if he or she offered an exclusive interview.  Every station and newspaper wants to be the first to uncover everything, so obtaining an exclusive interview may be a huge step forward for a network.  But, personal relationships affect journalism.  Technically, we aren’t suppose to interview people who we know personally or have a relationship with.  Yet, this happens all the time. 

If you have a personal relationship with someone, you shouldnt use them as evidence or report on them.  Period.  Even if a journalist gets away with it, there is always the risk of someone finding out and losing your job.  If a journalist is truly dedicated, he or she can obtain information ethically, without having to date anyone or bribe anyone.  It may be harder to get information out of people this way, but it’s never impossible.  My word of advice would be to just simply follow the rules.  It may be tempting not to, but in journalism, when you are serving the people first, you must follow the rules.

A columnist named Nadeem F. Paracha wrote an article about a TV station exaggerating a story about a supposed Lal Masjid operation.  The station visited a local university in attempts to get footage of outraged islamic-looking people to make the issue seem much greater than the students perceived it to be.  The TV reporters repeatedly asked students to seem more outraged for the camera and continued to attempt to direct their actions.  Many of the students were willing to participate only for the sheer enjoyment of appearing on TV, but to the viewers, this story may have been extremely sensationalized to the point of false information.  In this case, what the reporters had to do in order to make the story even remotely interesting was unethical. 

Although the idea of sensationalism may seem like a bad idea for journalists, news companies need to make a profit.  The idea of sensationalism is not to falsify news or lie to readers or viewers in any way, it is rather to increase viewership/readership by making the news more interesting or stating facts or parts of a story that readers/viewers may find more interesting.  In reality, news is made much less boring by sensationalism.  The key for journalists is to keep the sensationalism to a minimum or it could start to get misleading.

So who is right in this issue, Toyota or ABC?  For this specific story, I do think ABC is at fault.  I do think it was deserved for Toyota to pull all their advertising from ABC and ABC affiliates.  It may be a simple editing mistake in ABC’s eyes, but even if it is 2 seconds long or 20 minutes long it is still a mistake that cannot happen in the reporting industry.  While ABC thought they were inserting a 2 second shot for better viewing purposes and camera angles, it wasn’t the place to do it.  That two second inserted clip possibly created a false mistake by Toyota which they didn’t deserve.  Toyota has several crises they are dealing with right now and ABC falsifying their findings of them through visuals is just as bad as performing libel.  Visuals in news can sometimes be more important than text and statistics.

With all of this said, I don’t think it was a good idea for Toyota to pull ALL of their advertising  from ABC local affiliates.  The company is in crisis management right now and the last thing they need is less advertising and campaigning to keep their customers.  Although they can put this money elsewhere for advertising, ABC is a major network with millions of viewers and possible Toyota customers.

Anyway, Gatorade announced Friday that they will no longer be using Tiger Woods as a celebrity endorser.  I noticed this announcement came right after this supposed “apology” last week.  It seems as though Gatorade heard about a possible public apology by Woods and waited to see what he said before making any final decisions.  If so, I guess this really is a testament to how people feel his apology went.  For the most part, I haven’t heard many positive opinions of his live speech.  I even read an article in the opinion section of The Skiff the other day about how insincere his apology was and how his admitting his alleged feelings of ‘entitlement’ was not only unnecessary but rather offensive and pathetic.  I somewhat agree.  I can never be inside the mind of Tiger Woods so I can never really know, but his speech seemed rather staged and his mother in the front row looked embarrassed the entire time.

I think Gatorade made the right choice in dropping Tiger Woods after his speech.  If anything, I think his apology made him even less popular, so Gatorade had no major reasons to really keep him since they already stopped the production of their specialty Tiger Woods drink anyway. Although if he ever starts winning again they might regret their decision.

Tiger Woods giving a live public apology

On the one side, the fact that live emergency special reports are normally only reserved for presidential speeches and during times of crises makes it seem a bit inappropriate that Tiger’s apology for his cheating on his wife stopped all major stations including NBC, CBS, and ABC.  Why couldn’t this speech just be recorded and later aired at a scheduled time?  Have the personal lives of celebrities become so important to us that we would have it stop our regular news programs?  These questions aren’t asked as much as the ones pertaining to Woods’ actual speech, but I find it pretty significant that this was aired live on all stations.

However, on the opposite end, this was a major news event.  It would seem almost silly for news stations not to air this live.  Live TV has a certain appeal over any other kind of television.  People get kicks out of knowing or thinking whats on TV is actually happening at that time.  Even though this kind of air time is mostly only used for the President, the airing of Wood’s apology did get very high ratings.  apparently this kind of news IS what people want to watch, so why should we not provide it for them?

I’m not really sure what to think of this.  Tonight’s Olympic showings are apparently the best opportunity to beat ‘Idol’ and I hope they do it.  Although the show is hilarious to watch and towards the end when it gets serious, but I cant imagine really prioritizing that show over the Olympics, the one media event that brings the entire world together besides wars.  I can always look up the good clips of ‘Idol’ on You Tube or on ‘The Soup’ when Joel McHale is making fun of them, but I would rather watch the Olympic games during the time it’s actually going on.  It’s the live factor.  Live TV is always more interesting to people than already recorded news or games.  ‘Idol’ is just a show.  However, maybe I’m just biased because I always prefer news television over television shows.  For the average American it may be the flip side though, which may explain why ‘Idol’ is such a continuous competitor for Olympic games.

I normally prefer FOX news to any other news station, however after watching this video my opinions may have changed.  For those of you who don’t have time to watch the video I can summarize it.  Two reporters, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, were fired for wanting to report on the severely unhealthy findings of a company producing milk with harmful growth hormones.  The reporters were fired because FOX network and the new general managers were more concerned with getting sued and losing advertising money than they were with letting their viewers learn the truth about something potentially harmful to them.

Not only does this story deal with the issue of ethics and truthfulness of journalists, I think it also shows the issues with having these huge corporations run the majority of our media.  These two reporters were fired basically for standing up to the big guy.  What does that tell the American public?  It basically says if we want to get ahead we must follow corporate rules, even if they are wrong.  There is a big problem with media conglomeration today.  Either that, or we just aren’t having the right people control the media (i.e. general managers instead of reporters, business men instead of journalists).

We discussed this in the lab section this week.  Although journalists do have an unbelievable amount of responsibility to the public through the media, I would have to agree with the authors of “Elements” in this one.  On page 21 the authors throw us a bunch of numbers and statistics on why we as consumers are partly to blame for the media bias that exists today and in this country.

Everyone wants to blame the media for being bias and for changing people’s views.  However, just like any other product consumption, news is a commodity.  It is up to the consumer to pick up a paper and read it.  It is up to the reader to interpret the news.  It is up to the people of this country to WANT to have reliable sources and to WANT to know the truth and make decisions for themselves.  Yet, Kovach and Rosenstiel describe democracy as being government operated with us, the citizens, as just bystanders.  It is not democracy that made it this way.  The American public made the media what it is today.  Despite large corporations owning the majority of all media, it has been mostly the consumers choice whether they want good news or just silly celebrity news, which is what we see all over magazine covers and television news etc.  If people want good news, they need to buy and read good news.

I decided to search the web for issues dealing with media law so I could see some different cases and maybe find some interesting ones.  I wasn’t getting many articles until I typed into Google the words “celebrity libel cases.”  Everyone loves hearing about celebrities right?  If not, I found a case that is humorous enough for anyone to at least appreciate.

The case I’m talking about is the one where Britney Spears decided to file a lawsuit against Us Magazine for libel due to a headline about her and her ex husbands alleged sex tape www.associatedcontent.com.  The article explains how the 10 million dollar libel suit was dismissed after Superior Court Judge, Lisa Hart Cole, blatantly explained how “The plaintiff herself has put her modern sexuality squarely, and profitably, before the public eye.”  Spears and Federline’s argument was that there was never even a tape.  However, the decision would have been the same either way.  Whether or not Spears had a tape or not, her reputation was surely not anymore damaged then it had already been.

Image courtesy of About.com

I agree with the court’s decision in this case, however I can see how complicated libel and defamation cases can be with celebrities especially.  Everyone has their own opinions of people in the public eye.  Whether or not negative magazine tabloids, twitter updates, or anything else of similar nature hurts their reputation is really up to the public and courts decision.  It is hard to decipher the fine line between negative statement or opinions that one should brush off the shoulder and the ones that really should be fought for in court.  Unfortunately, the majority of what people may call gossip is true.  Although celebrities are known for denying negative press, there is almost always at least some truth behind it.