JO interns and blogging

Liz Allen has set some guidelines or ideas for her new summer interns and thier blogs. I think all the princples she mentioned are very important but the most important and one I think all bloggers should follow is if you can't say it out loud or to the person your referring to you should not blog about it. It is obvious that interns shouldn't write about anything that may hurt the company or put them in a bad light. What do you think? What do you think the guidelines should be a summer intern in a newsroom?

writers strike

The LA times reported that many TV crew members are still suffering from the writers stike. When I was in NYC this past semester I lost my internship at SNL due to the strike. I remember talking to my boss in the beginning weeks of the stike, and my boss predicted exactly what is happening right now. He told me that when (and if) the stike ended only about of the shows and people working for them would be picked up again. Since TV and more specifically live TV ratings have been going down the past few years corporations such as NBC (where I was working) needed a way to cut back on their expenses. Many people even saw this stike as "force majeure". What does this mean for TV? Are we beginning to see the end of TV, or even live TV programs which have significantly decreased in the past ten years. Many people think that in 20 years or so no one will be watching TV, and it will be replaced by the things like internet (youtube), and ondemand and tivo. There is already a company that is about going to go public that lets you fast forward through any comerical and watch whatever you want when you want, all in HD. What are your thoughts? With all this technology no one will wait to watch a TV show that comes our one a week.

A blogger for the Washington Post was fired because he was photographed when he was drunk in public. The blogger ended up getting fired because of this. HR people across the board have been jumping on this ban wagon. With facebook and myspace becoming so popular and accessible almost anyone can go on it and look at pictures of you. It is common for many jobs to "creep" on thier employees to find out what they do in their spare time. Do you think we should have to hide or conceal our personal lives in order to protect and uphold a healthy repuation at work? Or you think this is a way to keep professionalism alive?

public figures drug use

I do not think experimental drug use in college years is fair game for public figures or officials. Going back 5 or 10 years, or however long they have been in the public eye is certainly fair game but I do not think it fair to go back to years of thier lives when they may not have even known they wanted to be a politician or whatever. Also, I think it fair to assume that a majority of people at least try drugs in their lives and in my opionion this is not something someone should be critized for. We're not talking about people having drug addictions but there is no harm is trying a joint 20 years ago.

magazine covers

I think photoshopping magazine covers is such a norm today it would be hard to completely steer away from it. However, I think our society has become so obsessed with being thin that it has gone to far. It is okay to alter things here and there to make someone look a bit better, after all they are on a magazine cover for the whole world to see, but once you start dramatically chaning the size of a person, you are lying to the public in a way. The picture is not acurately displaying the person but the public is supposed to believe that is actually what the person looks like, the magazines are deceving the public. In the case the the star of Ugly Betty, it seems as though there was extreme pressure for her to look like all the other size 2 actresses so they did just that.

skybus

I find this to be a ver ytough ethical decision but it is interesting because within an hour or so (the duration of the flight) it will not matter as much because everyone will find out by the time they land. I think the public has some right to know while they are on the flight form the journalist that the airline is shutting down. I would personally like to know because it would probably influece whether or not I even got on the flight in the first place. There is obviously some major reasons the airline is shutting down and although Skybus may not be ready to go public with the story people on the flight sure have the right to know. However, I see how the journalist is put in a tough position because they do not want to cause a scene on a airplane or even suffer consequences from thier job.

I commented a week or two ago about the Golfweek cover displaying a noose. I still believe the cover was choosen in bad taste and that the editor should probably be punished for it. However, I do not think think firing him was necessary. I see how this cover could have been very offensive to some but I think it is obvious that the editor was not out to hurt people. He made a bad judgement call that jeopordized his career. This raises an interesting issue invloving ethics. Does it seem fair that something like putting a rope on the cover of a magazine can cost you your career? Making ethical decisions for many editors is something very serious as we've seen in this case. One wrong choice that doesn't go well with the public can have very serious repercussions.

There is much discussion over censoring photos and video clips for news. It is hard sometimes to tell waht will offend people and what the public has a right to know. In my opinion, very very disturbing images should only be revealed when there is no other way of expressing what happened. In the video clip we saw today of the Govenor shooting himself, I do not think the whole clip needs to be shown to express what happened. The public certainly has the right to see some of the images from it but I do not think they need to full clip or the image with the gun in his mouth. I think the photos should be allowed up until you know he is not going to shoot anyone else. At this point the audience is fully aware that he is killing himself with a gun, it does not complete the story anymore to see blood pouring out of his head or his lips sealed around the gun. I think a general rule should be applied for situation like this regarding images. If it were one of your family memebers would you want that photo/video running?

I think the LA Times issue with running the P.Diddy story is a tough ethical call. As the LA times is arguing they could have had no idea that the FBI documents were fabricated. However, since this is such a high profile case they needed to do some serious investigating before running this story. If there was any doubt in their mind (I would find it hard to believe if there wasn't) then they should have done some serious fact checking. I do not think it would be that hard to discover these documents were fake, which makes me think the LA time did very little background work. In which I think they are wrong for running the story. Also, since this has been such a long and on going thing (Tupacs murder) it seems like it would be common sense to look into every detail and fact throughouly.

In response to Newsweeks cover regarding the Tiger "lynch" joke, I think the cover is almost as bad as the joke itself. What is the point of showing a picture of the noose.. everyone knows what lynching is, why do they need to make it more graphic. I think this cover shows very bad taste and is not sympatheitic towards tiger at all. Im sure he was already offended by the joke and then has to see a huge rope on the cover of a magazine. While I think this was an awful thing to run, im not sure firing the editor was necessary. That is pretty drastic but I'm not surprised becaue I'm sure many people were severly offended.

I do not think the comment about "lynching Tiger Woods in a back alley" was appropraite at all. While I'm sure this woman was trying to make a harmless joke there are somethings that shouldn't be joked about publically. Lynching was and still is a very serious subject to many people. The word has so much hatred behind it that it cannot just be thorwn around and joked about. The fact the Tiger is biracial makes this whole situation a lot stickier. So in no way do I find this joke funny or presmissible at all.

In regards to the Vogue cover I do not see an racial undertones at all. Not in a million years would I have even thought of King Kong when I saw that picture. I think the cover is displaying an image of two successful and attractive celebrities (more or less). Since LeBron is so successful and such an icon I think he is protrayed in a completely postive light in the cover. By adding Gisel I think it just keeps the magazines audience interested. Since Vogue is prodominately a fashion magazine it caters towards women, and some women or people interested in fashion may not even know who Lebron is. I think this cover and photo shoot is a creative way or intertwining fashion/beauty and sports.