more thoughts on ethical reporting

http://davidjw.com/2013/03/05/spj-code-of-ethics/

1. I noticed that only two entries on the SPJ Code of Ethics specifically address multimedia journalism separately from traditional journalism. Those entries are under “Seek Truth and Report It” and are (emphasis is mine):
“Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.”
“Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible.”
While these two requirements touch on photojournalism and multimedia journalistic issues, they do not discuss multimedia editing, particularly the issue of cropping sound or recording natural sound in a slightly different location or at a different time. Better addressing these specific issues would update the SPJ Code, and increase its relevance to multimedia journalism.
2. When I worked as a news reporter for the Daily Wildcat, almost every story I wrote I faced ethical choices. I conducted interviews with my voice recorder, and while I didn’t make multimedia productions with the recordings I would use them when writing the story, and I would have to decide whether to use someone’s direct quotes or to paraphrase them. Sometimes if the audio quality was a bit rough or if there was background noise, a person’s exact wording  would not always be obvious and I would have to be very careful while listening in order to not misrepresent the interviewee.