Ethical Journalism Weekly Roundup: April 1, 2014

Network News Climate Change Stories Rarely Report Both Impact, Action

When it involves climate change coverage, viewers don’t always get the complete picture from U.S. network television, according to a University of Michigan study. Major networks—ABC, CBS and NBC—show the impact or actions taken in climate change stories, but rarely combine the components in the same broadcast to give viewers better coverage, the study shows. (via Michigan News)

Myanmar Is Simultaneously Expanding and Repressing Free Speech

Myanmar’s contradictions aren’t hard to spot. Known also as Burma, the country is gravely poor yet remarkably rich in natural resources. Its supposedly civilian democracy is headed by a former general, a vestige of the military junta that ruled from 1962 to 2011. The government has relaxed political restrictions, but recent years have seen renewed sectarian violence. (via Vice News)

Al Jazeera Reporters Are Banned In Egypt, So A CNN Journalist Reports For Them

Reporters from Al Jazeera are not, to say the least, welcome in Egypt. The country’s arrest and subsequent prosecution of many of the network’s journalists has drawn international condemnation, along with a concerted campaign of solidarity from reporters around the world. (via The Huffington Post)

Public Editor: The Reasons For And Against Endorsing A Politician

“I do think journalism has evolved beyond its original intent, a journalism class taken years ago stressed reporting news rather than trying to create news. Who decides what news is or isn’t? By embellishing a story using emotionally charged language is unfair. You would think the same story/topic on major TV networks or in print media content would be quite similar. Not so, especially if content is political. Yet the basis for forming an opinion is knowledge, but whose knowledge?” (via The Globe and Mail)

State of the News Media 2014

In digital news, the overlap between public relations and news noted in last year’s State of the News Media report became even more pronounced. One of the greatest areas of revenue experimentation now involves website content that is paid for by commercial advertisers – but often written by journalists on staff – and placed on a news publishers’ page in a way that sometimes makes it indistinguishable from a news story. (via Pew Research Center)

SaferJourno

A free and open-source curriculum guide for media trainers who teach students, professionals and peers digital safety and online security. SaferJourno provides lesson plans for six different modules; assessing risks, basic protection, mobile phone safety, keeping data safe, researching securely, and protecting email. The toolkit starts with the trainer’s guide, which walks journalism and media trainers through easy-to-use adult teaching and learning approaches. (via Internews)

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Photo credit: Flickr CC NASA Goddard Space Flight Center