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Apr
21
SPJ Ethics Week, 4/22-28, Code of Ethics
Filed Under Politics | 5 Comments
I joined the Society of Professional Journalists almost exactly three years ago, although I began to subscribe to their local, regional and national newsletters (whatever was available) before then. It was through a local, regularly emailed communication that I met Wendy Hoke, who has been an unparalleled resource for expanding my knowledge of the journalism profession.
SPJ’s Ethics Week begins on Monday, April 22. The sidebar of the week’s front webpage provides links to many different resources that flesh out how ethics affect the provision of information to the public. You can read SPJ’s Code of Ethics here. Here’s SPJ’s explanation for the creation of Ethics Week: “We have established Ethics in Journalism Week as a means of placing a spotlight on our ethical responsibilities and reaching out to the communities we serve with information on what citizens have a right to expect from journalists.”
Ironically, it was through prepping for the Capitol Square show that I discovered that this coming week was designated as Ethics Week by SPJ. And so I had two reasons to review the Code of Ethics and think about how much, as a blogger and as a freelance writer, I follow the Code (it’s voluntary for members; here’s the organization’s answer for why the code isn’t enforced; not surprisingly the answer revolves around the same reasons bloggers often cite for why they don’t believe in having a blogger code of ethics).
Here’s good guidance about applying the code:
Our hope is that the public and other journalism professionals will have in our code the tools necessary to evaluate journalism behavior and hold journalists ethically accountable for their actions. Indeed, the code specifically calls on journalists to clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct, to encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media and to expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
Tomorrow, you’ll be able to hear and see for yourself my comments about how I’ve kept this code of ethics in mind – as well as others that have been adapted specifically for the bloggers and Internet journalism – as I blog, if for no other reason than because I started the blog (more than a year after I joined SPJ) as an extention of my writing.
Given that this is SPJ’s Ethics Week, I guess it’s as good a time as any to evaluate what I’ve done well and what I could do better.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:01 pm April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 5 Comments
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Apr
21
SPJ Ethics Week, 4/22-28, Code of Ethics
Filed Under Politics | 5 Comments
I joined the Society of Professional Journalists almost exactly three years ago, although I began to subscribe to their local, regional and national newsletters (whatever was available) before then. It was through a local, regularly emailed communication that I met Wendy Hoke, who has been an unparalleled resource for expanding my knowledge of the journalism profession.
SPJ’s Ethics Week begins on Monday, April 22. The sidebar of the week’s front webpage provides links to many different resources that flesh out how ethics affect the provision of information to the public. You can read SPJ’s Code of Ethics here. Here’s SPJ’s explanation for the creation of Ethics Week: “We have established Ethics in Journalism Week as a means of placing a spotlight on our ethical responsibilities and reaching out to the communities we serve with information on what citizens have a right to expect from journalists.”
Ironically, it was through prepping for the Capitol Square show that I discovered that this coming week was designated as Ethics Week by SPJ. And so I had two reasons to review the Code of Ethics and think about how much, as a blogger and as a freelance writer, I follow the Code (it’s voluntary for members; here’s the organization’s answer for why the code isn’t enforced; not surprisingly the answer revolves around the same reasons bloggers often cite for why they don’t believe in having a blogger code of ethics).
Here’s good guidance about applying the code:
Our hope is that the public and other journalism professionals will have in our code the tools necessary to evaluate journalism behavior and hold journalists ethically accountable for their actions. Indeed, the code specifically calls on journalists to clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct, to encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media and to expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
Tomorrow, you’ll be able to hear and see for yourself my comments about how I’ve kept this code of ethics in mind – as well as others that have been adapted specifically for the bloggers and Internet journalism – as I blog, if for no other reason than because I started the blog (more than a year after I joined SPJ) as an extention of my writing.
Given that this is SPJ’s Ethics Week, I guess it’s as good a time as any to evaluate what I’ve done well and what I could do better.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:01 pm April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 5 Comments
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Apr
21
NCLB Reading First program under fed investigation, conflicts of interest FUBAR
Filed Under Politics | 4 Comments
On 2/23/07, I wrote this post, “US Dept. of Ed breaches prohibition on interfering w/state, local officials re: curriculum; spending billions improperly.”
Thank you to Progress Ohio for posting this entry today which links to this WaPo article, “Key Initiative of No Child Left Behind Under Federal Investigation.”
My February post provides plenty of answers as to why the Reading First program is under investigation, but this part alone angers me:
The Education Department’s inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said he has made several referrals to the Justice Department about the five-year-old program, which provides grants to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade.
Higgins declined to offer more specifics, but Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, said in an interview that he was questioned by Justice officials in November. The civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, which can bring criminal charges, is reviewing the matter.
Doherty, one of the two Education Department employees who oversaw the initiative, acknowledged yesterday that his wife had worked for a decade as a paid consultant for a reading program, Direct Instruction, that investigators said he improperly tried to force schools to use. He repeatedly failed to disclose the conflict on financial disclosure forms.
“I’m very proud of this program and my role in this program,” Doherty said in the interview. “I think it’s been implemented in accordance with the law.”
The Ed. Dept.’s inspector general report outlines incident after incident of where people with school districts detail the Doherty’s efforts to get them to use his wife’s program.
Even a major supporter of President Bush sees serious problems:
Another researcher, Sharon Vaughn, worked with Kame’enui, Simmons and Good to design Voyager Universal Literacy, a program that Reading First officials urged states to use. Vaughn was director of a center at the University of Texas that was hired to provide states advice on selecting Reading First tests and books.
The publisher of that product, Voyager Expanded Learning, was founded and run by Randy Best, a major Bush campaign contributor, who sold the company in 2005 for more than $350 million. Now Best runs Higher Ed Holdings, a company that develops colleges of education, where former education secretary Roderick R. Paige is a senior adviser and G. Reid Lyon, Bush’s former reading adviser, is an executive vice president.
“I’m very disappointed and saddened by the information that was provided at the hearing today,” said Lyon, who had been a strong defender of Reading First, which he said had nothing to do with his new job. “The issues appear much more serious than I had been led to understand.”
And last but not least, here’s how we know our founding fathers would be crying over the broken checks and balances system they devised because of essentially one party rule for so long:
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who declined to comment yesterday, has said management problems with Reading First “reflect individual mistakes.” But Doherty said nearly every aspect of the program was carefully monitored by the department and the White House, where Spelling was Bush’s top education adviser.
“This program was always firmly under the watch and control of the highest levels of the government,” Doherty said.
Helloooooww?
P.S.: expect ends justify the means explanations because, according to the WaPo piece:
Despite the controversy surrounding Reading First’s management, the percentage of students in the program who are proficient on fluency tests has risen about 15 percent, Education Department officials said. School districts across the country praise the program.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:47 pm April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 4 Comments
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Apr
21
Ugga-ugga! Women no like harsh pictures! Weak! Men! Ah! Strong! implies PD’s Clifton
Filed Under Politics | 2 Comments
I know I’m going to get flak from my MSM friends, especially at the PD, but I can’t help it – that title says it all re: how I hear Doug Clifton’s comments (even if he had no intention of sending that message) in Thursday’s Editor & Publisher:
About 30 to 40 readers complained to The Plain Dealer in Cleveland about the decision to publish on its front page four frames of an armed Cho acting menacingly. About a dozen of those calls came to Editor Doug Clifton.
“If there’s a pattern to (the reaction) it’s principally women who are repulsed by” the images, Clifton said.
Like many papers, the P-D ultimately decided that the images represented the horror of what happened on the Blacksburg campus Monday, Clifton said: “People have said we shouldn’t run them at all, but I think that would be unwise because the reaction among the curious — the appropriately curious — would be, what are you holding back? What are you concealing?”
The P-D went with all four images after a long newsroom debate in which the argument that carrying multiple images of the killer’s poses would blunt the impact of the “iconic” frame in which Cho stands with guns in both outstretched arms.
Really? Well, doesn’t identifying the complaints as being from women who are repulsed tell us something?
Not.
My preference for what Clifton could have told us that would be useful, if he’s going to generalize the comments: what exactly did the complaints oppose? What were the grounds of the opposition to the pictures? Why didn’t Clifton generalize in terms of a pattern as to why people thought the pictures shouldn’t run, as opposed to who thought the pictures shouldn’t run?
Not who was complaining. Talk about a way to invalidate the substance of the complaints. Just chalk it up to repulsed women because, well, we all know that women who find something repulsive tells us…what?? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, other than reinforcing stereotypes of who will and who will not approve of harsh images: women – weak. men – strong.
Uggga- ugga.
Not to mention, if Clifton received 12 calls, and he’s saying it’s principally women who are repulsed, how many of the 30-40 total complaints are we talking about as being “principally” upset? Is his characterization fair, or accurate?
In addition to granting that Clifton probably didn’t have this intent in mind (to reinforce the stereotype that women don’t like such pictures; which, btw, is very possibly linked to the fact that the women might be mothers who are concerned about what the kids will see when going to the grocery store, the library or passing by the places where you can buy a paper), I will also grant that his response could have to do with the way he was asked the question about whether there were any patterns in the complaint. But we have no clues about that (editors editing out such stuff from interviews).
Except for this, also from the E & P piece:
“In retrospect, if I had to do it all over again, wee[sic] probably would have gone with fewer pictures,” Clifton said. “I probably would not have used the photo of him pointing the gun directly at the reader because that is disturbing.”
Ah! Because the images are disturbing. Now see? That would have been a useful way to generalize the complaints: that complainants found the images disturbing because of the in-your-face nature of his pose.
Mr. Clifton, you’re retiring in just under four weeks. Most of your decisions will now be in retrospect. After all these years, how is it that you didn’t make the better decision about the pictures before publication?
And yeah, I know – I’m one of those women who is repulsed. But you see? I don’t get the PD anymore. So you don’t get my complaints. Well, not, almost.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:28 pm April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 2 Comments
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Apr
21
NCLB Reading First program under fed investigation, conflicts of interest FUBAR
Filed Under Politics | 3 Comments
On 2/23/07, I wrote this post, “US Dept. of Ed breaches prohibition on interfering w/state, local officials re: curriculum; spending billions improperly.”
Thank you to Progress Ohio for posting this entry today which links to this WaPo article, “Key Initiative of No Child Left Behind Under Federal Investigation.”
My February post provides plenty of answers as to why the Reading First program is under investigation, but this part alone angers me:
The Education Department’s inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said he has made several referrals to the Justice Department about the five-year-old program, which provides grants to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade.
Higgins declined to offer more specifics, but Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, said in an interview that he was questioned by Justice officials in November. The civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, which can bring criminal charges, is reviewing the matter.
Doherty, one of the two Education Department employees who oversaw the initiative, acknowledged yesterday that his wife had worked for a decade as a paid consultant for a reading program, Direct Instruction, that investigators said he improperly tried to force schools to use. He repeatedly failed to disclose the conflict on financial disclosure forms.
“I’m very proud of this program and my role in this program,” Doherty said in the interview. “I think it’s been implemented in accordance with the law.”
The Ed. Dept.’s inspector general report outlines incident after incident of where people with school districts detail the Doherty’s efforts to get them to use his wife’s program.
Even a major supporter of President Bush sees serious problems:
Another researcher, Sharon Vaughn, worked with Kame’enui, Simmons and Good to design Voyager Universal Literacy, a program that Reading First officials urged states to use. Vaughn was director of a center at the University of Texas that was hired to provide states advice on selecting Reading First tests and books.
The publisher of that product, Voyager Expanded Learning, was founded and run by Randy Best, a major Bush campaign contributor, who sold the company in 2005 for more than $350 million. Now Best runs Higher Ed Holdings, a company that develops colleges of education, where former education secretary Roderick R. Paige is a senior adviser and G. Reid Lyon, Bush’s former reading adviser, is an executive vice president.
“I’m very disappointed and saddened by the information that was provided at the hearing today,” said Lyon, who had been a strong defender of Reading First, which he said had nothing to do with his new job. “The issues appear much more serious than I had been led to understand.”
And last but not least, here’s how we know our founding fathers would be crying over the broken checks and balances system they devised because of essentially one party rule for so long:
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who declined to comment yesterday, has said management problems with Reading First “reflect individual mistakes.” But Doherty said nearly every aspect of the program was carefully monitored by the department and the White House, where Spelling was Bush’s top education adviser.
“This program was always firmly under the watch and control of the highest levels of the government,” Doherty said.
Helloooooww?
P.S.: expect ends justify the means explanations because, according to the WaPo piece:
Despite the controversy surrounding Reading First’s management, the percentage of students in the program who are proficient on fluency tests has risen about 15 percent, Education Department officials said. School districts across the country praise the program.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:47 am April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 3 Comments
Print This Post
Apr
21
NCLB Reading First program under fed investigation, conflicts of interest FUBAR
Filed Under Politics | 3 Comments
On 2/23/07, I wrote this post, “US Dept. of Ed breaches prohibition on interfering w/state, local officials re: curriculum; spending billions improperly.”
Thank you to Progress Ohio for posting this entry today which links to this WaPo article, “Key Initiative of No Child Left Behind Under Federal Investigation.”
My February post provides plenty of answers as to why the Reading First program is under investigation, but this part alone angers me:
The Education Department’s inspector general, John P. Higgins Jr., said he has made several referrals to the Justice Department about the five-year-old program, which provides grants to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade.
Higgins declined to offer more specifics, but Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, said in an interview that he was questioned by Justice officials in November. The civil division of the U.S. attorney’s office for the District, which can bring criminal charges, is reviewing the matter.
Doherty, one of the two Education Department employees who oversaw the initiative, acknowledged yesterday that his wife had worked for a decade as a paid consultant for a reading program, Direct Instruction, that investigators said he improperly tried to force schools to use. He repeatedly failed to disclose the conflict on financial disclosure forms.
“I’m very proud of this program and my role in this program,” Doherty said in the interview. “I think it’s been implemented in accordance with the law.”
The Ed. Dept.’s inspector general report outlines incident after incident of where people with school districts detail the Doherty’s efforts to get them to use his wife’s program.
Even a major supporter of President Bush sees serious problems:
Another researcher, Sharon Vaughn, worked with Kame’enui, Simmons and Good to design Voyager Universal Literacy, a program that Reading First officials urged states to use. Vaughn was director of a center at the University of Texas that was hired to provide states advice on selecting Reading First tests and books.
The publisher of that product, Voyager Expanded Learning, was founded and run by Randy Best, a major Bush campaign contributor, who sold the company in 2005 for more than $350 million. Now Best runs Higher Ed Holdings, a company that develops colleges of education, where former education secretary Roderick R. Paige is a senior adviser and G. Reid Lyon, Bush’s former reading adviser, is an executive vice president.
“I’m very disappointed and saddened by the information that was provided at the hearing today,” said Lyon, who had been a strong defender of Reading First, which he said had nothing to do with his new job. “The issues appear much more serious than I had been led to understand.”
And last but not least, here’s how we know our founding fathers would be crying over the broken checks and balances system they devised because of essentially one party rule for so long:
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who declined to comment yesterday, has said management problems with Reading First “reflect individual mistakes.” But Doherty said nearly every aspect of the program was carefully monitored by the department and the White House, where Spelling was Bush’s top education adviser.
“This program was always firmly under the watch and control of the highest levels of the government,” Doherty said.
Helloooooww?
P.S.: expect ends justify the means explanations because, according to the WaPo piece:
Despite the controversy surrounding Reading First’s management, the percentage of students in the program who are proficient on fluency tests has risen about 15 percent, Education Department officials said. School districts across the country praise the program.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:47 am April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 3 Comments
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Apr
21
This week on ONN’s Capitol Square it’s the Battle of the Blogosphere.
Dan Weist Guest hosts, and is joined by Matt Naugle from “Right Angle Blog” and Jill Zimon from “Writes like she talks”.
Find out first hand what bloggers think of their trade and responsibility to their readers.
Then, Terry Casey steps in to give an update on efforts to bring Tribal Casino’s in Ohio.
It’s this week, on ONN’s Capitol Square.
Looks like the Internet video will be available here. If anyone is able to get it to play before it airs on Sunday, I hope you’ll let me know! It doesn’t seem to play on Macs, and it’s not showing any “watch video” icon on Windows.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:18 am April 21st, 2007 in Politics | 1 Comment
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