Government reporters across the country- covering town boards and county councils – can’t relate to this, even a smidgen. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004004734 It’s fine to insist on on-the-record interactions between a reporter and a source, unless there’s an agreement. But that’s just it – it takes two to make an agreement. Why do journalists allow sources to unilaterally impose anonymity? Government reporters know there’s no such this as off-the-record at a public meeting. Are these speeches and briefing public in the same sense? Maybe not for briefings, maybe so for the speeches, but that’s just a guess. This letter is not bad, but when will journalists and their news organizations truly stand up for against this abuse of power? This would never fly in one-on-one interviews; this shouldn’t be any different. It exists because news people tolerate it. I know – who wants to be the first to walk out, and miss a story someone else will get? It’s a matter of competition vs. integrity.

It’s the start of another academic year. Again, we will be infusing young minds with the principles of the First Amendment and a free press that we all hold dear. We will also be explaining what seems to grow a more nebulous yet seems to be an increasingly obvious phenomenon — conflict of interest.

Duh. Don’t cover something in which you are directly involved or have an interest in the outcome.

Two cases in point. The communications director for the campus Student Government Association volunteered to take that beat. She disclosed her role to the editors. They made arrangements for her to switch beats.

The communications director for the radio station got stuck with the J-school beat but disclosed his role at the time. He was allowed to remain on the beat, but he must pass along stories on the radio station to another reporter.

The point here is not that journalists should not have private lives, but they should disclose conflicts. It behooves us as instructors to constantly explain conflicts of interest and ingrain it in students.

Happy new year!

I was watching a story about the astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak the other day on one of the cable news channels. It was about the possibility she would plead insanity to the charges against her. In the middle of the story pictures flashed by of some woman pacing around what appeared to be a cell in what looked like prison surveillance video. Was that Nowak? I wondered. Where was this woman? Was it meant to show she was disoriented and “prove” she was “insane?” Viewers couldn’t tell because there was no identification of the video. If you watch a tad of TV news you see this kind of thing far too often; file video that’s not labeled. During most cable TV news interviews now we are treated to cover shots (also called b-roll or cutaways) that purport to be related to the topic, but these are often not identified. Is this file tape shot a year ago? Is it a live shot? Where do these clips come from and why are they there? Is the viewer supposed to simply know the connection? A friend of mine was working in sports at a TV station awhile back. His show producer wanted video for a high school basketball game that had just concluded. She chose some file tape of a game several weeks earlier when the team was playing a different opponent. My friend objected. He pointed out that the video was misleading because the story was about tonight’s contest. He lost. The old video ran as if it were tonight’s game without labeling or comment. And the producer marked my friend as a “trouble-maker.” Truth in labeling was too much trouble, apparently. Of course, the story didn’t require video at all, and certainly not misleading video. How many times have you seen a story about Iraq filled with video that doesn’t seem to be connected to the story being reported? How many interviews have you seen that flash “exciting” video, like someone walking away from a camera someplace and you are left wondering “what the hell was that?” The SPJ Ethics Code says you need to: “Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.” There is a lot of questionable file footage in TV news these days. It shows laziness on the part of producers, reporters and editors, but it is also confusing and misleading to viewers. It is a visual lie. Lies, spoken or in video, should not be acceptable to good journalists, period. Jerry Dunklee SPJ Ethics Committee