BLOG! HUMBUG! Some Unfinished Business Before Christmas

MERRY XMAS
BC 601 has come to an end. But we do have some outstanding business. We have three students returning in the spring to complete the “group” presentation. That should be easily completed.

We also have some people still waiting for their outside professionals to respond to their senior projects. I will encourage them to carry through with follow up and attempt to meet the deadline.




We head into the break with holiday & good luck wishes, congratulations and farewells to Amy DalBon & Julie Stolze—they’re graduating early. That’s clearly an edge they have over the thousands of people who graduate in May. I invite them to actively engage in their blogs— I’ll keep the links on the Capstone Blog Weblog page hoping we can stay in touch.

For everyone else heading into BC 602, we will meet outside my office on Friday, January 21 at 11:30 and do the lunch thing to map out the upcoming semester. I would encourage you to visit the BC 602 syllabus and consider doing both the Senior Project Redux and the Alumni Research Paper (despite me offering you a choice).

Happy Holidays!!!

ADDING IT ALL UP

Don't take your capstone grade for granted. While each of you will walk away with exceptional scores on the presentations, it is the Weblogs that make up a huge chunk of your grade. If you were not diligent with your blog, then WORRY.

How I compute your Weblog score?
You can receive 10 points each for each week’s blog (16 weeks). That’s 160 points possible.

You can also receive 20 points for recruiting visitors to the blog pages and another 20 points for your significant feedback and comments offered over the semester. That’s 40 points.

If you have all 16 weeks worth of blogs and have actively participated with feedback and comments, you will automatically receive the other 50 points.

So to reiterate what it takes to get the full points on weblogs, your full participation in the blog assignment. You wrap it up by December 17 and should have16 weeks worth of entries in which you have demonstrated your participation as well as comments and feedback on your fellow students blogs.

If you have failed to engaged actively in feedback and comments, your blog score will likely fall in the 180-200 point range.

If you have failed to complete 16 weeks worth of required blog entries by the end of next week, then multiply the number of weeks you have by 10. That will become your blog score.

Final BC 601 Class Session

Thursday, December 9 is the final County Line for the semester and it's also the final time we meet as the BC 601 class. Amy & Julie will graduate later this month so the BC 602 class in the spring will be reduced to 8 students.

We will meet on Thursday at 2:30 instead of 2:00 to give the students presenting at Laural High School time to return to campus.

We will discuss the status of projects. We'll also spend some time Thursday talking about what you want achieve in the next semester as well as setting up a meeting day/time, etc. You'll also complete the course evaluation.

I wanted to express my appreciation to the students who came to my BC 251/Video Production class to talk about internships. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I believe you helped inspire some of the future capstone students.

I hope the self-reflection and self-assessment aspects of this course have helped you position yourself with career goals as you get closer and closer to graduation. See you on Thursday!

Senior Captsone Presentations on December 8, 2004

Amy DalBon & Julie Stolze will give senior presentations on Wednesday night at 6:30, December 8 in the McKelvey Theater/Lecture Hall in the Campus Center.

Julie actually has her Speech Comm presentation at 6:oo, so come early and get in on that one.

All students, faculty and staff are invited! Julie says her family is bringing cake!

Amy & Julie are enrolled in both sections of capstone this semester as both are graduating this month.

Sarah's Getting Published!

I wanted to send out congratulations to Sarah Ubry and draw your attention to this weekend's edition of The Herald.

Part of Sarah's senior project was to do some enterprising and feature reporting for radio and newspaper. The Herald is suppose to run her profile of a local milkman (yes, it appears the milk is still delivered in some local communities-- great story idea).

So check out the paper this weekend. You can read it online if you have a subscription password. She' feature a two-part radio series later in the week on Digital 88.9 News as well.

Don't forget your blog during the break!

Yo! Don't forget to drop in an entry for your blog at least updating your projects and your semester duirng the Thanksgiving break!!! You get weekly points per blog entries!

PROJECT UPDATES, PLEASE

We’re heading into mid-November. It’s a couple of weeks away from the Thanksgiving break. For BC 601 students it was the final time to pre-register for classes at Westminster. So how was it? Is the reality of finishing college finally sinking in?

Meanwhile, what's going on with your senior projects?
This week in your BC 601 blog entries, I would like you to concentrate exclusively on providing a thorough update (give specifics) on your projects. Don't worry about the career update or the topical news/link. Focus on giving me (and the world) a progress report on your project.

Let the updates begin!

Alex Trebek’s Short & Sweet Advice for Young Broadcasters

I was going through the Sunday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette which has some features on Jeopardy as it pre-recorded shows at the University of Pittsburgh recently. In a section labeled Q&A with Alex Trebek, a recent college graduate in the audience asked him if the game show host could get him a job. Trebek responded by pointing out that he’s been in the business for 44 years. The newspaper quoted Trebek as saying, “When I'm asked how best to prepare, I say get a good education and pay your dues. Start in small markets and work your way up.”

CNN Visitor on Campus

I wanted to back track here and offer my appreciation Meg Camardese for visiting us at Westminster. I’m a bit late on this entry but I wanted to offer some details about our visit with her back on October 25, 2004. She serves as an assistant to Aaron Brown for CNN’s Newsnight with Aaron Brown. She graciously agreed to visit campus for a Q & A session with our students. I’ll try to summarize what you missed if you were unable to attend.
Meg started out of college as a page at NBC. From that she moved into a position as an assistant to Tom Brokaw at NBC Nightly News and then had a brief stint with a subcontractor production company at the Food Network before moving to CNN. She loves the business and had the following advice for students who are passionate about it:

• Remember the value/importance of writing in this business.
• Be prepared to struggle with money when you start out—even if you begin in New York City.
• Double major if you can in areas like political science if you’re interested in jobs at CNN or the networks.
• Do the internships and network with people in the business because it’s a highly competitive business.
• Get involved in the internships and ask to do as much as you can-- don't be shy.
• Be prepared for long hours, but the time flies when you’re covering breaking news.

I could definitely identify all the themes from Dr. B's Checklist for Success coming through LOUD & CLEAR in Meg's comments.

Unethical Hidden Camera/Microphone Tactics in Local TV

A REAL WORLD LESSON IN ETHICS
I’m posting my reaction to Ian Durham’s weblog entry from October 28, 2004. Ian is an intern at WKBN-TV and it's important for you to read his entry as a framing document for my reaction. So click here to read his entry and then come back to read my response.

My Response to the "I'm Working Undercover..." Weblog Entry
When I read Ian's blog entry, he seemed proud and excited. I don’t want to diminish his experience, but I want him to grow from it and for all my students to understand clearly this is a lesson in journalism ethics you can never get from a classroom or from a text. Ian has first hand experience with these issues and I hope he and his fellow students can learn from it.

When I read his blog I was alarmed. I didn’t sense any ethical worries or any moral concerns raised in the entry. I must stress I never saw the story so I am assessing the events based on the blog entry. I do not blame him as he’s young and impressionable and was eager to please his mentors at WKBN. However, I find it disturbing that these mentors failed to inform him of the ethical quicksand they were stepping into and so I offer my ranting and raving for your consideration.

I think this young intern was sold on the sex appeal of this undercover expose. I think he was told that this story would blow the lid off of the Republican campaign and the only way to reveal this injustice was through hidden camera and microphone strategies. However, the ends here do not justify the means.

Bob Steel rallies against sloppy, unethical reporting and stresses we should never rush to use hidden cameras without applying a threshold test. In this case at WKBN, the ends never even came close to justifying the means. Steel, a veteran broadcast journalist who now directs the journalism ethics program at the Poynter Institute, responds to hidden camera and microphone tactics by taking a stand that they should be used a tool of last resort. The ethical use of the hidden cameras comes only when there is no other way to get the story and it is of utmost importance to the public.

“To justify deception we must be pursuing exceptionally important information. It must be of vital public interest, such as preventing profound harm to individuals or revealing great system failure.” Bob Steele, Hidden Cameras/Hidden Microphones: At the Crossroads of Journalism, Ethics and Law," a 1998 publication from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF) from The Poynter Institute’s Online Resources.

I wonder if all possibilities were exhausted before Ian was recruited to go undercover. And was this story so important that lies and misrepresentation and invading privacy justified the story WKBN uncovered? Did the producer or the newsroom management even bother discussing these issues with my student?

BEWARE GOTCHA JOURNALISM! BEWARE HIDDEN CAMERAS/MICS!

From where I stand Ian was used as a pawn in ethically bankrupt journalism.

Were there any other ways-- HONEST WAYS-- to get this story-- if there was a story?

Remember, concealment is a form of lying. Sending someone into a story to misrepresent himself while wired with a hidden microphone (thus violating what the unsuspecting parties assume is a private converstatin) is unethical.

How hard would it be to walk in and identify yourself and be forthright? Could you get the story by asking the Republican organizers to show/provide examples of Democrats getting tickets to the Bush visit? How hard would it have been to do a consenting, legitimate, one to one interview about the allegations?

Did the means justify the ends? Did the station prove anything from the tactics it used?

It looks like the station didn't prove anything. In the end I think the station loses credibility for taking the cheap and dirty approach to this story. It was an attempt at sensationalism and gotcha journalism. They wanted to catch the Republicans red-handed and they didn’t.

If they cannot produce any verifiable examples or contacts then do you have the beginnings of a story? I don’t think so. I wonder "WHO CARES" anyway.

Do we really think the people watching TV news are so stupid that they can't figure out these appearances are filled with Republican "plants" and supporters. There's no big secret in that.

Was it fair and balanced?

Why is the so called tipster who made the allegation not going on air? It's put up or shut up time? There's a severe credibility issue here. What are this person’s motives?

When you think about it, isn't the station obligated to TELL THE WHOLE TRUTH. Should the report go beyond trying to prove one person's allegation? Is there an obligation to seek out the same story when it comes to the Democrats with a Kerry appearance.

A Lesson in Journalism Ethics

This was unscrupulous and irresponsible reporting. It was stupid and useless and yielded no valuable information for the viewers. I blame the so-called grown ups at WKBN who lacked the professionalism to see ethical dimensions of this undercover report and for manipulating an intern into carrying out their dirty work. Wiring an intern with secret microphones was sneaky and underhanded and clearly wrong.

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.