June 22nd, 2010
Yet again, ABC has disclosure problems
By Andy Schotz
Maybe ABC is trying to improve — maybe — but it has miles to go.
In 2008, the network paid $200,000 to the family of Casey Anthony — accused of murdering her daughter — for “an extensive library of photos and home video for use by our broadcasts, platforms, affiliates and international partners.”
Not only is it highly questionable ethically to pay a source while covering her, ABC compounded the matter by keeping it quiet for two years and continuing to report on the case.
The SPJ Ethics Committee chastised ABC in March 2010, shortly after the payment was revealed during a court hearing.
ABC denied that the $200,000 was an enticement for Casey Anthony to talk to the network. “No use of the material was tied to any interview,” the network said in a statement.
When the SPJ Ethics Committee asked ABC spokeswoman Cathie Levine about the $200,000 payment, she reiterated that it was not for an interview. It was for licensing exclusive rights, which she said is a common practice for broadcast news organizations.
We responded: “The SPJ Ethics Committee says news organizations that pay sources, for whatever reason, while covering them inject themselves in those stories and develop an ‘ownership’ interest. The public can legitimately question a news organization’s credibility and doubt whether its reports are fair and accurate.”
In talking to us, Levine said ABC stood by its decision to pay Casey Anthony’s family $200,000, but conceded that the payment should have been mentioned as the network covered the story.
“We should have disclosed it to our audience,” she told us, promising that disclosure would become the policy from then on.
Fast forward to several days ago. ABC aired an exclusive interview with Casey Anthony’s parents, George and Cindy Anthony, on “Good Morning America” and, once again, didn’t mention the $200,000 payment.
After hearing about this from another Ethics Committee member, I e-mailed Levine to find out what happened to the new policy or if this latest failure was another oversight.
She replied: “We did interview George and Cindy Anthony on GMA – we haven’t licensed anything from either of them so there was nothing to disclose.”
Is ABC actually trying to claim that a $200,000 payment to Casey Anthony is in no way tied to an exclusive interview it scored with her parents? And that it couldn’t at least be perceived that way?
Perhaps it’s the Ethics Committee’s fault for not spelling it out crystally clear.
Forevermore, ANY reporting the network does on this story is inextricably tied to the $200,000 payment. ALL future reports should disclose that the network has a business relationship with the subject of the story.
Obviously, this isn’t where I detected a glimmer of possible improvement at ABC. It was something else Levine wrote in her last reply to me:
“The policy we discussed has not changed – in case you didn’t see 20/20 on Friday night, we made a disclosure in our interview with Melody Granadillo as we licensed material from her.”
Because I’m sometimes a scandal behind, I had to look up who Granadillo was. It turns out she’s a former girlfriend of Joran van der Sloot, who is suspected of murdering one woman and was questioned several years ago about the disappearance of another.
ABC’s story previewing its “20/20″ report mentions that Granadillo kept mementos about van der Sloot and says: “Granadillo licensed a selection of these materials to ABC News.”
There it is: another weak ABC disclosure.
“Licensed”? Did ABC pay Granadillo? How much? What were the terms?
Why did the network feel the need to again breach basic journalism ethics?
And is it just a coincidence that ABC got an “exclusive interview” with Granadillo as part of the business transaction?
ABC isn’t alone in this charade of license payments and exclusive access. Other TV networks are using this same shell game of tortured logic to claim they don’t pay for interviews.
I look forward to the day when there’s real improvement.
Tags: ABC, Casey Anthony, Cathie Levine, checkbook journalism, Good Morning America, Joran van der Sloot, Journalism ethics, Melody Granadillo, SPJ Ethics Committee
June 25th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
SPJ, in chastising ABC News in the Anthony case, has barely scratched the surface of media’s abuse of its First Amendment right to freedom of the press.
It doesn’t seem to dawn on many journalists––notoriously ABC News, Martin Bashir and apparently SPJ––that THEY (the media) are the ones responsible for Michael Jackson’s tarnished image. THEY are the ones who tried to make a caricature of him. (True Jackson fans never fell for it.) THEY are the ones who put his career and reputation in domestic freefall by lying about him and not giving Jackson his due ALL ALONG.
Even after being acquitted of all charges, Jackson never escaped the burden of those allegations in his lifetime. Media stripped him of his basic right of the presumption of innocence by CONSTANTLY referencing allegations for which he was acquitted. No one in the media was talking about the long term psychological effects which befell Jackson as a result of the toxin of incredibly corrosive, vicious, monstrous headlines and those headlines have been going on for 25 years.
http://www.mediatenor.com/newsletters.php?id_news=260
That an otherwise honorable profession as journalism would act in concert to destroy a living, feeling, striving and contributing human being just to achieve ratings and sales is abhorrent.
The media, especially filthy rags like The New York Post and unscrupulous mainstream journalists like Bashir—to this very day still employed by ABC News!—made nearly all of it up out of whole cloth. Why? Because wild hyperbole, gross exaggeration and outright lies sell newspapers! It was all abuse of the First Amendment right to freedom of the press in gory detail. Once again, a precious right was, and continues to be, abused—over and over again.
People can be killed by less than physical attack. The media has blood on its hands. Bashir will one day face his Maker and will have to answer for what he did to Michael Jackson. On that day, it will suck to be Bashir, but all of journalism—mainstream and tabloid—should hang its collective head in shame.
Why bring this up five years later? Because Bashir and ABC News single-handedly caused millions and millions and millions of people around the world to lose faith in journalism as the mainstay of democracy. The pain of such a media travesty is being experienced yet again all over the world on this, the first anniversary of Jackson’s death.
BTW, nobody saw your lame chastisement of ABC News. Where did you publish it–in the Kinnetka Falls weekend throw-away paper?
June 26th, 2010 at 12:34 am
For SoCalGirl: You’re free to agree or disagree with any post on this blog, but please stick to the topic. I’d rather not take down anyone’s comments, but yours each time have been unrelated to the issue. You’ve made perfectly clear your opinions about the coverage of Michael Jackson. If there’s a post on that topic, you’re welcome to comment.
When the SPJ Ethics Committee issues statements, we don’t control which news organizations write about them. Some statements get a lot of coverage, some do not. That doesn’t affect our opinions.