Tips on how to combine social media with reporting while respecting privacy

Last week, the Poynter Institute published an article called “How to decide what can be published, what’s private on Twitter and Facebook,” which gave advice to journalists on trying to decipher this dilemma, “as more journalists rely on social media to find ideas and sources,” the author of the article Nisha Chittal said.

The main issue discussed was trying to figure out which social media posts should be used in reporting and which should not. “Anything said on Twitter is generally fair game to be reported upon,” Chittal said. But, when it comes to Facebook, “some journalists make the case that public posts are fair game – but others disagree,” she said.

It is no secret that Twitter has become one of the most powerful tools for journalists. It helps journalists find stories, find more varied sources, and engage with a much broader audience. As CNET News pointed out, Twitter is also the place where major news stories first break out.

Twitter is mostly public and tweets can and have been used for reporting, as it is done with other news sharing platforms such as Storify. Facebook however has different privacy settings and users choose whether to share their posts with everyone or just with friends, making it more difficult for journalists to decide whether or not to use other people’s posts for reporting or not.

Journalists must also be careful about what they can and cannot say themselves, as more journalists have been getting reprimanded or fired by their employers over personal posts lately, according to the International Journalists’ Network (IJNet).

As social media rules for journalists are still considered rather new, the Poynter article suggests journalists ask themselves these questions when trying to decide what to publish and what not to publish:

·      What was the author’s intent? If shared in a closed group or personal profile, was it intended to be kept private?

·      How did the source respond when you asked about including the information in a story?

·      Is the author a public figure? How public? There is a difference between a school principal and a professional athlete.

·      What harm could come to the individual if the information is made public? Is that harm justified by the public benefit of the information?

·      What alternatives do you have for getting similar information?

If trying to decide what you as a journalist should post on social media platforms, the most logical solution, and one that will also allow you to connect with a wider audience, is to have public accounts to be used for journalism purposes and keep your personal accounts private if you choose to. Alternatively, due to the growing number of social media platforms, journalists could also choose to use one as private and one as public, i.e. – a private Facebook profile and a public Google+ profile. What journalists should keep in mind in the end is that the trend of combining social media with reporting seems to keep growing, and journalists should embrace that and not shy away from it.

Tough times for the journalism field in Colombia

Two journalists have already been killed in the month of March in Colombia. Journalist and political leader Argemiro Cárdenas Agudelo was shot to death on Thursday, March 15, and journalist Jesús Martínez Orozco, a community radio reporter, was killed Thursday, March 29, the International Press Institute (IPI) reported.

In February, IPI published a special report expressing concern for “the threat to regional media in Latin America,” stating that “the vast majority of the journalists in those cases were known for their criticism of local politicians or their reporting on drug cartels or illegal mining operations.”

Although only one journalist, Luis Eduardo Gómez, was killed last year in Colombia, at least 202 cases of violence against journalists were recorded in 2011, according to a report by the Colombian Federation of Journalists (Fecolper in Spanish).

The Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP in Spanish) also presented a report earlier this year expressing its concern over the state of freedom of expression in Colombia. Violence, self-censorship and impunity were listed as the biggest problems journalists face in Colombia. Additionally, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also published a report expressing their concern that criminal gangs "intimidate and silence" journalists in Colombia.

Although these recent killings have not yet been confirmed as to whether or not they had anything to do with the victims’ professions, these reports show that being a journalist in Colombia is a risky choice. Moreover, Colombia also has one of the lowest rankings (143 out of 179 countries) on the World Press Freedom Index 2011-2012 report published by Reporters Without Borders earlier this year.

Judging how people rate freedom of the press in their countries

Although freedom of the press seems to be suffering in various parts of the world, according to the Reporters Without Borders 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index results published earlier this year, a new Gallup poll showed that two-thirds of people worldwide say that the media are free in their countries.

Out of 1,000 people in 133 countries and areas surveyed, people’s views vary widely, ranging from a high of 97 percent in Finland to a low of 23 percent in Belarus, with a median of 65 percent of adults saying that “the media in their countries have a lot of freedom,” according to the report.

The countries with the least perceived press freedom were found in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and the former Soviet Union. “Perceived press freedom was highest in developed countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Finland ranked the highest, with 97 percent of respondents describing the media as being free,” the Huffington Post explained.

In the Americas, Haiti had the lowest percentage (51 percent), and the United Sates had the highest percentage (87 percent). Interestingly, the U.S. fell 27 spots to number 47 on the Reporters Without Borders’ 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index mentioned above. This was due to the many arrests and problems that journalists in the U.S. have dealt with during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. According to the independent news media organization Free Press, "70 journalists have been arrested while covering Occupy protests in 12 cities around the country."

Consequently, there are “small discrepancies between what experts who make external evaluations assume, and what the people being polled think,” WebProNews pointed out, indicating that this observation has been noted by independent research organizations such as Freedom House.

A lesson learned in journalism

The University of Texas at Austin’s newspaper, The Daily Texan, has made headlines around the whole United States for publishing a controversial cartoon blaming the media for sensationalizing the Trayvon Martin case.

Martin, 17, was shot and killed on Feb. 26 by a volunteer neighborhood watch coordinator named George Zimmerman while Martin was walking to his father’s fiancée’s home in Sanford, Florida, according to CBS Miami. The incident sparked outrage throughout the nation because many people believe Zimmerman’s actions were provoked by racism, as Martin was black and was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and because Zimmerman was not arrested after the incident, according to Reuters.

“The honorable journalism tradition of presenting thoughtful opinion and commentary, the ‘editorial,’ is under fire and with it the First Amendment promise of free speech,” CultureMap Austin Editor in Chief Kevin Benz said in a column about the newspaper’s cartoon.

At first, Stephanie Eisner, the Daily Texan cartoonist, defended herself by saying she was just trying to make a point by saying the media was being biased, according to The Daily Texan. However, she later publically apologized for being ambiguous, NPR reported. “I intended to contribute thoughtful commentary on the media coverage of the incident, however this goal fell flat,” Eisner said.

This was definitely a learning experience for the students who work at The Daily Texan. As the newspaper’s editorial adviser Doug Warren said in an editorial, “The Texan staff is learning — to do their jobs and about the impact that their work has on the members of the community they serve,” urging everyone to take a deep breath before judging the newspaper staff, the New York Daily News reported.

Study shows that news consumption has gone up thanks to mobile devices

According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, more people are now consuming news thanks to the increasing popularity and use of mobile devices, and more people are sharing news thanks to social media, although they still go to the original news source to get their news.

One of the new changes in news consumption has to do with more people using tablets to get their news (27 percent), as they have become more popular in the last year, the Canadian QMI Agency pointed out in an article, adding that “80 percent of tablet users still check the news on their laptops and desktops.”

The 2012 State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism states that this does not necessarily mean that the news industry is profiting, as the technology companies are the ones taking in most of the profits. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! generated 68 percent of digital ad revenue in 2011, an Associated Press article explained.

The study also showed that although people do share news on social media outlets, the change in news consumption is not as dramatic as some may think. Social media outlets, such as Facebook and Twitter, “are used as supplements to news sources, not as replacements,” the technology news site ZDNet explained. “Even so, social media are an increasingly important driver of news, according to traffic data,” ZDNet added.

The fact that more people seem to be consuming news, regardless of which method they use to get them, is good news for journalists. Yes, there is a shortage of jobs in the newspaper industry, as a recent report showed. But, people’s want and interest for news consumption still exists, and it is the journalists who can provide quality journalism to the public; it just might have to be through different mediums.

"If you want to be a journalist, think online"

Once again, the future of journalism might seem grim to some after the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) published its annual newspaper advertising statistics for 2011. The report shows that the print advertising revenue went down 9.2 percent, but that digital advertising revenue grew 6.8 percent. The total advertising revenue went down by 7.3 percent. In fact, in a recent report from The Huffington Post, the newspaper industry was number one on a list called “America’s Ten Disappearing Industries.”

What this means for journalists is that, “If you want to be a journalist, think online,” as Matt Rosoff from Business Insider said. Rosoff pointed out a LinkedIn article that explains that newspapers have shed the most jobs since 2007 than any other industry in the United States.

Robert Niles from the Online Journalism Review also explained that the future of journalism education then should be to fulfill “the growing need for instruction and guidance in profitable and community-building communication in the growing online publishing media”. However, he said that unfortunately, most universities are not doing this.

As the numbers and the data show, what this means is that the focus for journalists should be in the digital world. As Indiana University’s journalism professor Hans Peter Ibold explained, “The recent social media revolution is already fueling advances in journalism and better ideas about how reporters can engage and accurately inform citizens.”

As I have stated before, there is no need to be alarmed about the future of journalism. Journalists just need to adapt to the changes in the field and take advantage of the new opportunities to communicate with the public. If interested in how to learn more about journalists taking advantage of using social media, here are a few helpful links:

Twitter for Journalists

The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook

Twitter and Social Media Resources for Journalists

Confessions of a Social Media Editor

10 Social Media Tips for Bloggers

Six Tips for Journalists on Using Facebook for Reporting

The Deterioration of Freedom of the Press in Ecuador

During the month of February 2012, Ecuador’s stance on freedom of expression and freedom of the press has catastrophically gone from bad to worse. The country’s president, Rafael Correa, has become journalists’ worst enemy and his actions against freedom of expression have provoked indignation across the globe.

On Feb. 4, 2012, Correa’s government passed a law prohibiting journalists from reporting on any activity regarding the upcoming elections. The law, which was introduced by Correa himself, states that the media should abstain from promoting positive or negative messages about candidates or political topics, directly or indirectly. “Media cannot be political actors," Correa said, according to BBC News. 

Just a few days later, two Ecuadorian journalists were ordered to pay $2 million for moral damages to the president, reported Reporters Without Borders. The journalists, Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, had written a book called “El Gran Hermano” (The Big Brother), about the supposed contracts that Fabricio Correa, brother to the president, had with the state, which the president knew about, according to the Associated Press. The journalists will also have to pay $100,000 for the president’s legal fees, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

Even more inconceivable is Correa’s latest victory in his path to the deterioration of freedom of expression in Ecuador. On Feb. 15, 2012, president Correa once again won a legal case against the newspaper El Universo for alleged libel, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Three newspaper owners and an ex-columnist were sentenced to three years in prison and a payment of $40 million for damages, according to Reuters.

These incidents have caused outrage at a global scale, especially among defenders of freedom of expression and of the press, such as newspapers and journalistic organizations. The Brazilian newspaper O Globo published an editorial called “Correa massacres freedom of expression;” the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo called Correa the “Attila of the press.” Reporters Without Borders said that the “El Gran Hermano” sentence was "politically arbitrary and inopportune." The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called it "disproportionate" and a "hard blow to investigative reporting." And the list goes on.

Nevertheless, although Correa pardoned those involved in the El Universo case and the “El Gran Hermano” case on Feb. 27, as the New York Times reported, the Ecuadorian president continues to attack the press. On Feb. 29, Correa gave a speech during his visit to Peru calling all Latin Americans to “rebel against the abuse of the dictatorship” of the press, the news agency Efe reported. Correa's battle against the media does not seem to be coming to an end any time soon, which is unfortunately damaging Ecuadorians’ right to freedom of expression, and which deteriorates the level of democracy that exists in Ecuador.