EYE ON ETHICS

Ms. De Jesus is the executive director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
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A court battle over a restaurant review shows nothing if not the coming of age of the relative latecomer in the growing pages of lifestyle: the food writer or restaurant critic.

Lawyers and journalists in the UK and the US followed the case which began when a restaurant owner lodged a libel complaint in Northern Ireland against negative review of Goodfellas pizza restaurant in West Belfast. Written by restaurant critic, Caroline Workman, it was published in the Irish News in August 2000. According to a report on the case, Workman “had been unimpressed by pretty much everything she encountered. She deemed a chicken dish ‘inedible’ and a glass of Coca Cola she found to be flat, warm and watery.” She gave the restaurant one star out of five.

The jury decided in favor of CiarnanConvery, the owner of Goodfellas, awarding him 25,000 pounds ($50,000) in libel damages. The unprecedented decision rocked press rooms on both sides of the Atlantic, as everyone in the business of reviewing sensed the chilling effect the ruling would have beyond the circle of food critics. The Irish News challenged the decision, with legal luminaries on the offensive. In March this year, the appeals court reversed the decision, asserting reviews to be legitimate expression of fair comment and opinion.

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This article was first posted on The Jakarta Post last May 7. The author is a journalism instructor at the Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS) in Jakarta.
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May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, when journalists take stock of their work-linked concerns. One such concern relates to their professional conduct or lack of it. North Sumatra journalists recently discussed this issue as it relates to local reporting.

A madrasah or Islamic boarding school offers free tuition, with donors covering the school expenditures. However, a local newspaper charges the madrasah lets its pupils go hungry. The madrasah complains rightly the story is one-sided, as none of the school executives were interviewed.

Meanwhile, a weekly paper reports on a money pyramid scam in Medan that promised investors 60 percent monthly interest. After the fraudulent company, PT BMA, collapsed and its boss became a fugitive, the paper printed this headline: “Bos PT BMA Siluman Anjing?” (PT BMA Boss a Phantom Dog?) The story is accompanied with a line drawing of a menacing dog with a protruding tongue and set of sharp teeth.

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The article was first posted on UPI Asia Online last May 5.
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NAKHONRATCHASIMA, Thailand– Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi warned the country’s media on Friday that they need to cooperate, be responsible and ethical. Seeming to mimic a wizened statesman, he enjoined Malaysia’s media to understand the subjects they report on, to earn public respect, and to convey correct reports to the public. So far, so good — in principle.

Maybe it was like Thailand’s Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej, who in a February 2008 interview with Al-Jazeera condescended at the end of the interview to tell the better-informed female reporter, “Next time, you should do your homework.”

So the leaders of two Southeast Asia neighbors somehow feel up to giving the media guidelines on how to be reputable, helpful, correct and ethical. It’s a shame that they don’t always adhere to the same guidelines themselves, especially in Samak’s case. With a memory that doesn’t allow him to recall his part in the October 1976 massacre where some four dozen pro-democracy protestors were killed, and to add insult to injury, foolishly insists “only one unlucky guy was killed” in the state-incited bloodbath, Samak is hardly the one to advise anyone on accuracy in reporting, being ethical or accurate.

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Mr. Alam is Lahore bureau chief of the news magazine The Herald.
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A middle-level official working at the Lahore office of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has been suspended for ‘leaking’ a story to the media. A television reporter conned him to get the video film of a suicide attack on his agency’s local office on March 11, 2007 – an act that subsequently created huge broadcast waves across Pakistan and well beyond it, but also threatened the job of its ‘source’.

The reporter’s boss does not want to discuss the moral predicament the case poses: Is it ethical to get a news story even if it means endangering other people’s lives and livelihood? But he is quick to point out that at least a couple of other news channels in Pakistan did not acknowledge his channel as the source when they also ran the attack video some hours later.

Similar incidents are not uncommon in the world of cutthroat competition the electronic media in Pakistan has become of late. In the rush to break the news faster and earlier than the rest, television reporters seem to have precious little time to waste on bothering about the ethical implications of their assignments.

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Prof. Haque teaches Agril.Extension, Apllied & Agricultural Journalism at Shere-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Government-sponsored ethics. Ethics is a matter of voluntary compliance, but some governments have issued their own codes of ethics, or demand that journalists comply with their concept of ethical journalism. The following piece, adapted from Bangladesh’s The New Nation on Feb. 21, 2008, assumes that that country’s government is well within its rights to expect compliance with its views on ethical journalism. Your views and comments would be welcome.

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Recently I read an apology from the editor of a reputable English daily for publishing an article in that newspaper which was malicious, sweeping, and full of innuendos and few facts.

I was glad to see the editor’s goodwill and courage to admit a mistake and to express his regret for it. He mentioned three reasons why he apologized. While stating his third purpose, he raised a core ethical question–whether a columnist has the right to malign individuals, families or groups without any proof.

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