RTNDA Code of Ethics

My attempt with this blog entry is to engage in a discussion about journalism ethics. I want my students and those reading to take a hard look at what's wrong with the situation and how young people getting into broadcasting are easily caught up in the excitement of a story and will let the thrill cloud their minds to what is right and what is wrong.

I'm posting a link here to the RTNDA Code of Ethics as a resource and reference to my posting about the hidden camera/microphone tactics used by WKBN-TV and for the way one of our capstone students was manipulated and drawn into the matter. I ask the question, can the "producer" defend the tactics 100%? Was there any other way to get this story and be forthright, fair and credible?

Journalists have an obligation to the truth and to fairness. I believe the way the station went after the alleged "Republicans Refuse Democrat Tickets" violated the obligation to truth and fairness. Again to frame this discussion better you need to review Ian Durham's weblog entry about the events by clicking on to his capstone blog.

From the RTNDA Code of Ethics at www.rtnda.org

TRUTH:

Professional electronic journalists should pursue truth aggressively and present the news accurately, in context, and as completely as possible.
Professional electronic journalists should:

• Continuously seek the truth.
• Resist distortions that obscure the importance of events.
• Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders.

Professional electronic journalists should not:

• Report anything known to be false.
• Manipulate images or sounds in any way that is misleading.
• Plagiarize.
• Present images or sounds that are reenacted without informing the public.

FAIRNESS:

Professional electronic journalists should present the news fairly and impartially, placing primary value on significance and relevance.

Professional electronic journalists should:

• Treat all subjects of news coverage with respect and dignity, showing particular compassion to victims of crime or tragedy.
• Exercise special care when children are involved in a story and give children greater privacy protection than adults.
• Seek to understand the diversity of their community and inform the public without bias or stereotype.
• Present a diversity of expressions, opinions, and ideas in context.
• Present analytical reporting based on professional perspective, not personal bias.
  

Weblog Requirements -Rehashing the feedback/comment requirement

Look What I Dug Up in the Syllabus
Weblogs- 250 points possible
Blog Entry Deadline: Every Friday, by 12 noon (regardless of class schedule)
Each week members of BC 601/602 update their weblogs with specific information which includes:
a summary of "what I did in broadcasting for the current week" including updates on senior projects, presentations and other course work.
updates on developing career objectives, career placement planning, etc.
a brief summary/review of an on-line article (with an active hyperlink) about some topical event/issue in electronic media that clearly connects with the student's interests and/or career goals.

Students will also be encouraged to comment on postings of their fellow capstone bloggers’ pages and invite guests to visit the blogs and offer feedback.

You will update your blog each week by the Friday noon deadline. Missing a deadline will result in a loss of points for that week. Each entry will receive 10 points with a possible 160 points for the next 16 week. You can receive up to 20 points for recruiting visitors to the Capstone blog page who offer constructive feedback to you, the instructor or a fellow capstone student. You can also receive up to 20 points for offering your constructive feedback or comments to a fellow capstone blogger.

DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS, HALLOWEEN & SENIOR PROJECTS

The calendar shows that October is almost gone. HALLOWEEN, ALL SAINTS DAY/HOLY DAY or DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS should frighten you if you haven't made progress on your senior project. These days signal time is running out and we'll be well into November.

I’d like to read more specifics about your senior projects. Some students have provided information on what’s happening, others elude to it and still others kind of skip over it. Please make sure you give some specific information what’s going on with your projects. It clearly goes to “What I did in broadcasting this week…”

Last Call for Comments

I think I’ll make this my final appeal for Capstone students to actively engage in commenting on each others blog entries. So far this semester the feedback has been scattered and inconsistent across the board. While I’m pleased with the level of effort on the blogs, my goal of establishing a dynamic enterprise here seems to have peaked. The feedback component does factor into the grade for blogs, however, it appears that requirement continues to be overlooked.

We Welcome Your Comments (and for BC Students it's Required)

Hello, BC Capstone Bloggers!

It’s been a while since I presented an entry. I’ve been so engaged in reading yours and adding comments here and there. But I’m back…

Speaking of comments and feedback, I think most of you should revisit the course syllabus on the “Weblog Requirements” and how you should be actively engaged in feedback on the blog entries.

According to the syllabus: You can receive up to 20 points for offering your constructive feedback or comments to a fellow capstone blogger.

However, you won’t receive any points in this area unless you’re adding your feedback on a regular basis. I don’t require you to reach out and comment on every blog entry for every student every week. But some kind of constructive input each week would be appropriate. So be aware, in addition to my reviewing your blog entries, I’m also noting who’s offering feedback and who’s not.

Those Senior Project Proposals!

BC Capstone Senior Project Proposals: DEADLINE/Thursday, September 30, 2003!
September has been a long yet kind month. It's provided some extra padding for Capstone students to craft their senior project proposals.

This week, Capstone students are required to file an "EXTRA" blog entry that gives a summary or outline of their Senior Project Proposal.

They are also REQUIRED to provide comments as directed by the instructor (CHECK YOUR E-MAIL FOR SPECIFICS).

We'll also hear some presentations this week, so be ready to turn in those formal proposals and hear from your classmates!

Defining Your Senior Project

As BC Capstone students define senior projects, they should consider what they need on a resume tape or in a portfolio to help reach their short term goals.

Consider what kind of work YOU need to polish and showcase. Consider what kind of work you LOVE to do and then do it. Consider what title or position you want to emphasize on your resume.

Do as much as you can, but do the best that you can. If you love announcing, then take on all the shifts you can and devote your time to prep and performance. If you like to write and report, do as much as you can. Create personal challenges like submitting stories to the Associated Press. If your story gets picked up, that's validation that the professioanl world recognizes you are a broadcast journalist. There's no subsitution for the growth and body of work that comes from experience.

You can also be diversified. But come up with a plan, identify your titles, and craft a week to week schedule with defined outcomes and deadlines for yourself. Be disciplined and be serious about your target outcomes.

You can do shifts on the radio to get airchecks for an air announcing.
You can create/produce/serve as talent for a live radio remote.
You can produce/anchor newscasts.
You can produce radio or television promos.
You can report for radio news. LIVE reporting is very valuable.
You can produce segments for our television programs.
You can shoot, edit, report for TV.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. You should take this opportunity to get the material that you want and need.

Still fuzzy on what you want/need? Who do you look up to in the business? Then get in touch with that person. Identify recent grads, faculty or working professionals you know or have come in contact with in the past year. Contact them by telephone or e-mail and pick their brain about suggestions of material that will help you make the transition toward your career goals.

More Choices for In-class Presentations

More Choices, So Choose Wisely

I’ve added some additional choices to the presentation topic list. After considering some of the points I heard you cover in your career goal presentations, I’ve decided to add a few. I’ve included the topic of “Diverse Major: Does it help or hinder?” as to explore how you see your time in the BC major and at Westminster as it relates to your career goals. One might criticize our program as making everyone a jack of all trades and a master of none. But someone else might praise it for giving you the ability to appreciate, understand and utilize all aspects of broadcast communication thus allowing you to integrate your knowledge and experience far more effectively in a variety of positions, especially management. In a nutshell, you know and understand almost everyone’s job in most electronic media operations. So what do you think? What’s your take? You could build an interesting, personalized presentation around this.

So here are the topics you can choose from at this time:

• “Diverse Major: Does it help or hinder?”
• Dr. B’s Checklist for Success & a Personal Plan of Action
• My Internship Experience
• Where I Want to Intern- The Best Place for Me to Begin
• Liberal Arts & BC Experience: How You’ve Grown
• Building my Audition/Resume Tape or e-Portfolio
• Free BC/Media Job Listing Resources & the Job Search
• BC Alumus Profile

If you have a topic idea you'd the group to consider, please share it with the class or make a comment.

From the Maker of the Total Perspective Vortex...

Zaphod and the gang are back on the radio with a new series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on BBC Radio 4-- yes, radio--and you can listen on the web starting September 21.

For those of you who are panicing, Zaphod is the two-headed ex-galactic president who boozes around with his interstellar-hitchhiking slacker pals. They've bumbled their way from the Resturant at the End of the Universe back in time to primitive Earth where early man succumbed to a virus contracted from a dirty telephone only to be replaced by a race of alien middle management executives who crashed here while escaping from their doomed world.

If that's not enough to get you interested, then you might want to know the radio plays are based on a series of best-selling books by the late Douglas Adams.

Adams claimed he came up for the idea for his story back in 1971, when he "lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, thinking about the galaxy and how you might find your way around it. His solution, the 'Guide', was an ingenious device that offered advice about almost any place, object, entity or event you might care to name - all at the convenience of your fingertips. This vision is now approaching reality on the Internet in the form of h2g2."

When most people my age were caught up in reading about the Lord of the Rings and getting hooked on Hobbits, I spent my delinquent years in high school listening to H2G2 on NPR and reading about Arthur Dent's outlandish journey from the end of the world to the end of the universe.

Before Bender joined us on Futurama on television, there was Marvin the paranoid android and Douglas Adams' satire on the radio.

FYI: The H2G2 movie is coming soon. Disney has made a feature film version of H2G2 due out in theaters next summer.

To give you an idea of how much I was into the book, when I was in my voice and diction class in college, I used the H2G2's Chapter on the "Total Perspective Vortex" as my personal selection to present to the class. It was not well received at my small, Amercian Baptist based liberal arts college in West Virginia. Then again, neither was Dr. Who.
I guess it's a cult thing that only Monty Python fans got into. Oops. I almost completed this blog entry without mentioning the number 42. Okay, I'm finished.

The Week That Nearly Washed Away

Hurricane Francis’ sloppy seconds made for a soggy mess locally as the Little Neshannock Creek became a murky, muddy river in much of Wilmington Township. Even members of the Amish community remarked they had never seen this kind of flooding from this small stream.

The flooding was more than just a few fields turning into lakes. The high water flooded homes forcing local volunteer firefighters to use boats to evacuated people. And Digital 88.9 News covered it all Live on the radio Thursday morning. We also had our crews for the The County Line out documenting it all on video.

The problem with a weekly television news magazine show is you don’t get on air for a week, so you lose that immediacy punch. But we’ll promote the video and then look back on how a small creek caused chaos on what would have been an ordinary Thursday morning.

This was also the week that Tandi Lane became the unofficial broadcast news goddess of Digital 88.9 News with her daily contributions in reporting or anchoring. On Wednesday she brought back a story from Slippery Rock on Senator John Kerry's stepson, Chris Heinz, campaigning to get college students to register to vote at Slippery Rock University.

In addition to filing a live report from SRU (where the Titan Radio signal does come in), she also filed a field report featuring interviews with Heinz. Her story was then picked up by the Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcast Wire.

The Future's So Bright...

Capstone students delivered their “career goal” presentations this week. The presentations explored potential employers for recent college grads, employee benefits, the livability and viability of television and radio markets, etc.

It’s time for each student to finalize a career goal statement; however, it should not be seen as inflexible. You may change your statement as you make this journey into your final semesters in college. Think of this as your way of getting started on that “career objective” part of your resume.

This statement should be posted as an individual blog entry titled “My Career Goals: Short & Long Term.” In this entry students will write two brief, but clearly defined paragraphs. The short term paragraph will describe your desired outcomes for employment within the next year (you should offer specifics). Consider where you want to be? What you want when you start out in a job?

The second paragraph should describe your desired long term career goals and include specific DMA or ADI information if applicable. You should also consider where you want to be, what you want out of your job? This is a good chance to think about who you want to become and how you get there.

Be aware that this entry is independent of your regularly scheduled blog entry.

FYI: The "doggles" featured above are real sunglasses marketed to pet owners and run about $20 each.