• J-Source

    Tabloid journalism and crime reporting

    Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson take a look at how the European tabloids report on crime. This tell-all reporting style can ruin lives and reputations. Does journalism that's not done solely to sell papers ultimately win people’s support? 

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    Why transparency is not enough: The Case of Mr. Mike

    Are bloggers journalists? Can insiders be outsiders? Ira Basen confronts some long-debated questions using the case of Mike Arrington, the Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur who started the blog TechCrunch. This article originally appeared on the Center for Journalism Ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison site.

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    Five new CBC Ombudsman reports released

    Kirk LaPointe has been busy.  The CBC Ombudsman has recently released five new reports. You can download and read them in full from the CBC Ombudsman website, but here are some summaries.

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    Dutch hyperlocal pushes envelope in mixed-zone editorial/commercial content

    In just one year, Bart Brouwers has grown Dutch hyperlocal Dichtbij’s (meaning “close by” or “close to me”) website network to 85 communities from just three. It’s been fast, he told European Centre of Journalism reporter Alexandru-Brdu Ulmanu, but the trick is to keep a balance between opportunities and costs. To Brouwers, part of that…

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    Chequebook journalism

    Is chequebook journalism resurfacing? Check out CBC Ombudsman Kirk LaPointe’s blog, themediamanager.com, which highlights two recent cases in the States. In one case, ABC paid a woman who received texts from congressman Anthony Weiner, and in another payments were made to a woman who had been held captive for 18 years in California. Both The…

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    The ethics of reporting on baby Storm: did journalists make a mistake?

    Earlier this week, Margaret Somerville, director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law and McGill University, wrote a story for online news publication The Mark questioning whether journalists made a mistake when they identified baby Storm — a Toronto child whose sex is known only to seven people, including the parents, and whose story…