Journalism ethics

Is Disclosing Medical Records an Unhealthy Reporting Method?

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First published on al.com.  Click here.

Note: This column includes implied obscenity in a tweet presented later in the article.

To anyone who doesn’t know, ESPN NFL reporter Adam Schefter caused quite the ethical dust-up when he ran a tweet showing Jason Pierre-Paul’s medical records.

To quickly dismiss one objection: no, Schefter did not break the law.  He did not violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) by showing it.  The medical professional who leaked the info to Schefter did.

Schefter is not in legal hot water for disclosing information, even if someone else obtained illegally.  The Supreme Court decided that in Bartnicki v. Vopper, where a radio station played illegally wiretapped conversation between teachers union officials during tense negotiations in Wilkes Barre, Pa.

The court found “a stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.”  Schefter operates under the same shield.

That might sound like the equivalent of accepting stolen property and getting away with it, but the Supreme Court treats news-related information differently.

But law does not equal ethics.  The question is, did Schefter violate journalistic ethics here?  As with many such questions, the answer is determined by where you stand on ethics.  There is, however, another issue here, a constant with ESPN: ethical transparency.

Many argue that Schefter should have declined to show Pierre-Paul’s medical records and merely reported the information, anonymously sourced.  Showing an individual’s private medical information crossed a line, to them.

What is troubling to me — and always has troubled me — is that ESPN ignored its commitment, as a news media organization, to be transparent about this ethical decision.  I watched Schefter’s live report on ESPN SportsCenter.  It was all news, zero reflection.

In its September 2014 revision to its code of ethics, less than a year ago, the Society of Professional Journalists added the words “and transparent” to its fourth major standard, “be accountable.”

The resulting exhortation, “Be Accountable and Transparent,” includes the following sentences of explanation and application: “Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public. … Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content.”

As I write this blog, ESPN has not done this and certainly did not choose to do this early in its reporting.  It could have been handled so simply — with two or three sentences of explanation by Schefter.  But for whatever reason, Schefter and his producers decided not to take the time, even with the existence of ethical disagreement within the profession and the audience.

I wrote about this in al.com a couple of years ago — regarding Joe Schad’s reporting of alleged autograph selling by Johnny Manziel.  It is sad to see that apparently nothing has changed.

Don’t expect to hear from ESPN on this through its ombudsman blog.  The network has not updated the blog since Dec. 3, 2014, when Robert Lipsyte ended an excellent stint.  It is a sad, and telling, omission.

So where does it go from here? Nowhere?  Maybe not.

I see another layer to this debate, and it relates to Schefter’s relationship with his anonymous sources within the league.  Note the following tweet by former Steeler James Harrison:

Apologies for Harrison’s language, but it does raise the question: How will Schefter’s sources within the league respond to this?  One reason a journalist never breaks a pledge to an anonymous source, even risking imprisonment, is because of the damage it would cause to other source relationships, and these are an investigative journalist’s lifeblood.

It will be interesting to see if Schefter gets any pushback from his sources — players, agents or team officials — because of this.  Players might punish him for damaging an unsigned colleague’s negotiating power.  Agents and team officials might be more likely to look the other way.

All of these considerations weigh in to a serious ethical discussion in a matter like this.  And as the SPJ code encourages, and ESPN once again ignored, it’s best to include your audience in that ethical discussion.

John Carvalho is an associate professor of journalism at Auburn University.  A former sports journalist himself, he discusses sports media issues at @John_P_Carvalho.

 

Why Bill O’Reilly Is Not Brian Williams (And What It Says About Ethics)

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Please forgive a topic unrelated to sports, but the recent Mother Jones article about Bill O’Reilly’s supposed wartime exaggerations deserves comment. It is more a demonstration of the absurdity of 2015-era media than a serious ethical discussion.

A couple of weeks after Brian Williams was suspended by NBC because of misrepresentations about his Iraq War experiences, MJ presented allegations about how O’Reilly described his experiences during the 1982 Falkland Islands War.

Not only are O’Reilly’s “offenses” not as serious as Williams’, but the comparison also demonstrates the tit-for-tat bickering that marks so much of advocacy reporting today.  And it’s an unwelcome distraction from the Williams mess, which points to the media’s lack of enthusiasm to police itself aggressively.

I am no fan of O’Reilly’s.  I find his “no-spin” hype disingenuous, his self-promotion annoying and his content anything but journalism.  One reason I minimize his offense compared to Williams is because I take Williams’ role more seriously than O’Reilly’s.  Bill is an entertainer playing to a core audience.

Describing what he did more than 30 years ago as a “war zone” reporter for CBS News, complete with an anecdote about rescuing a photographer from an advancing army, is certainly an embarrassment, but it should not detract from the seriousness of Williams’ actions — or of NBC’s foot-dragging in addressing it.

It is telling that while Williams’ reporting in New Orleans on Katrina has been questioned, the same has not happened to O’Reilly yet.  He has also referenced reporting assignments in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, but neither Mother Jones nor any other outlet has disputed that.

Enough has been written about Williams’ journalistic sins.  It’s not like all he did was to describe being in Kuwait as “war zone” reporting (to try to draw a parallel with O’Reilly).  Instead, he related an RPG attack on his helicopter in Iraq — some 21 years more recent the Falkland Islands War — that happened to another helicopter in his group.

What’s done is done, and Williams has admitted his dishonesty.  What concerns me more is the broad defense of Williams, not only within the NBC offices at Rockefeller Center, but among journalism professionals.

Williams benefited from a lot of goodwill early in the controversy, with many respected colleagues minimizing his offense.

I was not one of them.  As I noted earlier, I consider Williams’ approach preferable to O’Reilly’s.  But we don’t judge journalists (or pseudo-journalist/entertainers).  We judge their actions.

And once a journalist crosses the line as clearly as Williams admitted to doing, journalists must protect the standards of our profession.  Instead, so many journalists hemmed, hawed, shrugged, harumphed … anything to avoid confronting a serious ethical breach from a high-profile personality.

The response should have been stronger, even if regrettably so.  Though we judge the action and not the journalist, we penalize the journalist for the action.  To minimize the penalty for a well-liked personality — or strengthen it in the case of O’Reilly, who is a lot more irritating — minimizes the action.

The article by Mother Jones, stirred into the pot, only makes it worse.  It’s the intramural back and forth that punishes Fox News for glorying in NBC’s plight by pointing out a supposed mess for Fox.  It implies a covenant of mediocrity: one network stinks as bad as another, so let’s accept it and not single anyone out, lest we be outed ourselves.

I exhort Auburn journalism students to aspire to a higher level when confronted with breaches of ethics.  Episodes like the Brian Williams debacle are regrettable.  Excuses and distractions are too.

 

What the Manti Te’o Story Tells Us About the Media

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First published on al.com.  Link to it here.

As the sports world moves on (if that’s possible) from the Manti Te’o case, sports journalists still need to stop, take a breath, and reflect on what we have learned from this.

To be honest, journalists are poor practitioners of self-reflection.  We tend to move on to the next story, promising to do better next time and looking for an article to paste over our previous mistakes.  But we need to wrench the gut a little here.

Witness the eagerness to sweep everything under the rug based on Te’o’s interview with Jeremy Schaap.  Whatever you feel about Te’o, however, does not relate how the sports media handled the story.  Or, to paraphrase Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”

Much of the debate has centered on the reporting by Pete Thamel of Sports Illustrated and Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN, the highest-profile of the many who reported this story.  Both admitted to noticing the red flags in September, when Te’o spoke of his “girlfriend’s” death and how it affected his play in the Irish’s big win against Michigan State.

So now, the debate is, to what extent should Thamel, Wojciechowski and others have double-checked on this.  Thamel pleaded a tight deadline in his defense.  Would SI have delayed the article for a few unconfirmed facts?  Based on this experience, the answer would be different now.  But back then?  We don’t know, because Thamel apparently did not ask.

One troubling aspect of all this is the extent to which everyone, Thamel and Wojciechowski included, seems to be engaging in shoulder-shrugging more than serious reflection.

For example, Peter King of SI tweeted, “And for those crucifying @SIPeteThamel, crucify me too. He’s tremendous. I back him unequivocally.”

King can be excused for rushing to support a colleague, which is understandable, but his statement represents a rhetorical “straw man” that distracts from the real issue.  No one is out to crucify Pete Thamel.  His article and reporting, like the others is another matter.

In journalism, we separate the product from the writer once it is written.  We put our heart and soul into what we write, then step back and let it be cut to pieces by editors, to improve it.  Let’s follow the same principle here.

Good reporting is good reporting because it informs and engages the reader with facts, many of which were not previously known.  It’s not good reporting because a good reporter writes it — although good reporters earn their reputation through their work.

The converse is true.  Pete Thamel and Gene Wojciechowski are not bad reporters.  But this was bad reporting.

So where do we go from here?  So many supporters seem to be throwing up their hands, as if such situations are inevitable.  ”What are we supposed to do?” they ask.  ”Demand to see the body?”

No, but neither are we supposed to give up and accept that factual errors are inevitable.  David Griner, writing for the Poynter Institute, uses the response from “This American Life” and Ira Glass, when a story about injuries and abuse at an Apple factory in Africa turned out to be false.

What we have seen instead falls far short, and we need to strive to be better than that.  Journalists are supposed to skeptical, not cynical.  We are supposed to have our B.S. meter fully engaged, regardless of the source.

And that is one factor here: The desire of all involved to believe the best about Te’o.  That was one of the most scathing indictments of Thamel, by Josh Levin of Slate.  Many more in the media are guilty of wanting to believe the best about Te’o, so that they unfairly dial down their B.S. meter.  The word for that is “bias.”  Would they have been so trusting toward an SEC football player?

My hope as we move on from this is that all sports journalists, from Sports Illustrated and ESPN down to the local weekly, will learn from this.  If a fact cannot be confirmed, stop and confirm.  As this story demonstrates (and it is not a once-in-a-lifetime disaster), it’s worth it.

Imagine if Thamel or Wojciechowski had asked their superiors for a delay to double-check a couple of red flags.  Imagine the article that would have resulted — a well-intentioned but naive college football player hoaxed by a fake girlfriend, culminating with her supposed death before a big game.  Imagine the heartache and missteps this would have saved Teo and his family.

What if one journalist had done his or her homework?

Talk about a hero.