Put Your Head under the Blanket. Turn on Your Flashlight. Discuss.

From the Financial Times:

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, said he believed “freedom of the press should always be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and tenets of all religions”.

The dispute began on September 30, when Jyllands-Posten, Denmark’s biggest newspaper, published 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a move considered blasphemous in Islam. One of the cartoons showed the Prophet with a bomb under his turban. The Danish newspaper later apologised but the row escalated this week after several European newspapers reprinted the cartoons to assert the right to free speech.



Here's a link to the cartoons.

An Ethics Problem? A Shopping Tip? Or Something Else....?

This shopping tip from wonderful "Regret the Error."

Ethics students: You don't have to comment on this. But you might want to.

The Case of the Purloined Parking Permits

About ten years ago a student in my advanced reporting class was faced with this situation: Since parking is tight on our campus, daily parking passes are at a premium. At the time, our office of Public Safety apparently had a box of passes -- signed by a public safety officer but otherwise blank and therefore "negotiable" -- to which student employees had access. My student observed a classmate, who was also a casual acquaintance, selling and sometimes giving away these blank passes to which he, a student employee in Public Safety, had helped himself. The student reporter wanted to turn this into a story for the Foghorn but was not sure how to proceed because even though this activity was taking place in front of him in another class -- there was nothing clandestine about it -- the student selling, and sometimes giving away, the passes knew and trusted my student and apparently did not think of him as a student journalist. To test the waters, my student bought one of the passes for a dollar.

The questions at the time were: Should he go forward with the story? If so, how? If not, why not?

Yeah, Well I Don't Trust Pollsters

This from a 2005 Gallup poll. The numbers indicate the percentage of those polled who give these groups a high or very high rating when it comes to ethics.

Nurses 82
Druggists/Pharmacists 67
Medical doctors 65
High school teachers 64
Policemen 61
Clergy 54
Funeral directors 44
Bankers 41
Accountants 39
Journalists 28
Real estate agents 20
Building contractors 20
Lawyers 18
Labor union leaders 16
Senators 16
Business executives 16
Stockbrokers 16
Congressmen 14
Advertising practitioners 11
Car salesmen 8
Telemarketers 7
________________________________________

Vrinda Writes, Writes, Writes Some More

She recreates a scene to establish a human connection. But she also works in the short form, here and here.

"This business attracts assholes like flies flock to poop."

http://blacktable.com/daulerio051208.htm

When What Happens in Vegas, Doesn't Stay in Vegas

Posted by Steve Outing 11:16:40 AM

Is That E-mail Blogable?In the last e-mail I received from fellow E-Media Tidbits blogger Fons Tuinstra (who lives in China), I noticed an interesting addition to his signature. It read:

This e-mail is: [ ] blogable [ ] ask first [ ] private

That's great idea. Each time you send an e-mail, of course, you need to put an "x" in one of the boxes.Why is this necessary? Well, in a world where everyone, it seems, has a blog, it's worthwhile to make it clear when something you've sent in an e-mail is meant to be private. It just might save some embarrassment and hard feelings if a recipient of your e-mails decides to blog what you hadn't intended to be shared with the world.

Lia Steakley Causing Trouble

I like the way Lia describes this story. She says:


today I'm either a hero or the devil depending on who you ask.
lia

And I say that for a journalist that's a very good day.

Be Afraid, Les Shu say. Be Very Afraid

This is his warning:

Why we should be careful about posting stuff. Let the crackdown begin!

http://www.gawker.com/news/conde-nast/media-bubble-bursted-krucoff-fired-132848.php

http://www.gawker.com/news/fishbowlny/were-not-the-only-one-who-gets-sources-fired-133150.php

She's Not in It for the Awards

But when they come Sarah Berkley will accept them in a winning and modest spirit.

Top StoriesIndex-Tribune earns four national awards

10.11.05 - The Sonoma Index-Tribune was recognized in the 2005 National Newspaper Association's Better Newspaper and Better Newspaper Advertising Contests with a total of four awards, including first place for best business story, a feature by I-T reporter Sarah Berkley, titled "Rentals, rentals everywhere."

The national contest judges said Berkley's story was a "well written, well researched piece on an important local issue."

Berkley's story titled "Finding money for school supplies," also earned an honorable mention in the best educational/literacy category.

The judges said of that story that it, "brings to light in a readable way how loss of funding can affect the classroom and how teachers and schools face those challenges. Good writing and reporting."

She adds, "I thought you might like to know
that yours truly, former student Sarah (Franklin)
Berkley was paying attention in class on some
occasions, even when it looked like she was giggling
and playing paper football in the back row with David
Gudelunas."

In other words, she was multi-tasking.