I paid QWest $150 this week to prove someone fibbed about one of our reporters.
I was probably motivated by vanity (I hate to be wrong about a staffer), but we re-learned an important lesson: Feeling vindicated should refresh our commitment to independent buttressing of reports that bear on people’s character.
This started after I threw a [...]
A half-dozen emailers and a pair of callers griped Monday about our coverage of the local protest rally against California’s new ban on gay marriage. Alongside our story, we re-ran the list of eastern Idaho donors to the Proposition 8 campaign. That list was meant to buttress the idea that eastern Idaho played a key role, but it bugged readers who [...]
Newspapers do a lousy job of labelling and explaining those odd stories that we call “Analysis.” I’ll stipulate that they do us a great deal of harm because readers know opinion when they see it and we’ve told them there’s only one section for Opinion. (see ethics code section on analysis)
But critics should confront the value [...]
I’m unrighteously proud of the fact that we not only post our ethics code and standards of conduct online, but we also post enforcement examples in which we name names. After all, we hold public officials up to close scrutiny, so it makes sense that we who operate in the public interest should also disclose conflicts [...]
A code of ethics is just words on a page, until you act on it.
KPVI, Channel 6 walked the talk last week.
Anchor/News Director Brenda Baumgartner and a half-dozen staffers spent the night of Oct. 14th at Highland High School putting on a series of skits that are the background of a successful public workshop [...]
Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa.
Forgive us, oh readers, for we have sinned. A couple members of the Post Register’s news staff have apparently broken the fundamental rules of journalism by blogging about politics, slapping candidate stickers on their cars and posting yard signs. Arrgh!
I threw a tantrum the last time this happened, publicly identifying the miscreant and [...]
A dead body lay on the steps of the church adjacent to Temple View Elementary School in Idaho Falls Friday morning. It was in plain view of kids who were walking to school and being dropped off behind the church. Principal Natalie Peters saw fit to send out a letter to parents alerting them to [...]
