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Ethics of Digital Verification in International Reporting

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Handbook of Global Media Ethics

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Abstract

This chapter looks into journalists who rely primarily on social media to report international news in hard-to-reach countries like Iran, Syria, and North Korea. While social media-based, remote-controlled reporting is often associated with cheap journalism, it can also deliver high-quality journalism with accuracy and depth. Specifically, this chapter focuses on two ethical issues emerging out of journalistic verification via social media: hierarchies and risks for journalists. It finds that colonial hierarchies are being replaced with flatter and more horizontal relationships. With regard to risk, digital verification decreases physical harm but raises new issues of trauma. This chapter proposes the recognition of ethical tradeoffs and offers examples of best practices.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Sambrook, “Are Foreign Correspondents Redundant?”

  2. 2.

    Seo, “Marginal Majority at the Postcolonial News Agency,” 49.

  3. 3.

    See Dubberley, Griffin and Bal, Making Secondary Trauma a Primary Issue.

  4. 4.

    See Schudson and Anderson, “Objectivity, Professionalism and Truth Seeking in Journalism.”

  5. 5.

    See Hamilton, John Maxwell, Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting.

  6. 6.

    Seo, “Marginal Majority at the Postcolonial News Agency,” 46.

  7. 7.

    See Seo, “We See More Because We Are Not There.”

  8. 8.

    Eliot Higgins, interview by author, Leicester, July 16, 2014.

  9. 9.

    Chad O’Carroll, interview by author, Seoul, August 10, 2016.

  10. 10.

    See Gans, Herbert. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time.

  11. 11.

    See Committee to Protect Journalists, Journalists Killed in 2019.

  12. 12.

    Cottle, Sambrook and Mosdell, Reporting Dangerously, 2.

  13. 13.

    See International Press Institute, International Declaration on the Protection of Journalists.

  14. 14.

    See Palmer, The Fixers.

  15. 15.

    See Losh, “Rising Risks in Journalism Require Real Safety Training.”

  16. 16.

    See Fitts, “The Importance of Protecting Freelancers.”

  17. 17.

    Paul Radu, interview by author, New York, April 14, 2016.

  18. 18.

    See Baranetsky, Victoria, “Data Journalism and the Law.”

  19. 19.

    Cottle, Sambrook and Mosdell, Reporting Dangerously, 166.

  20. 20.

    See Amend, Kay and Reilly, “Journalism on the Spot: Ethical Dilemmas When Covering Trauma and the Implications for Journalism Education.”

  21. 21.

    See Beam and Spratt, “Managing Vulnerability” and Duncan and Newton, “How Do You Feel?”

  22. 22.

    See Dufresne, “Trying Times.”

  23. 23.

    See Fullerton and Patterson, “Murder in Our Midst: Expanding Coverage to Include Care and Responsibility.”

  24. 24.

    See Dubberley, Griffin and Bal, Making Secondary Trauma a Primary Issue, and Feinstein, Audet, and Waknine, “Witnessing Extreme Violence.”

  25. 25.

    Dubberly, Griffin and Bal, Making Secondary Trauma a Primary Issue, 6.

  26. 26.

    Personal communication.

  27. 27.

    See Seo, Virtual Foreign Bureaus and the New Ecology of International News.

  28. 28.

    See Clay, Journalists as Vicarious First Responders.

  29. 29.

    See Newton, “The Trauma Floor.”

  30. 30.

    See Coddington, “Gathering Evidence of Evidence: News Aggregation as an Epistemological Practice.”

  31. 31.

    See Kraidy, The Naked Blogger of Cairo.

  32. 32.

    See Aitamurto, “Crowdsourcing in Journalism.”

  33. 33.

    See Laney, “To Facebook You’re Worth $80.95.”

  34. 34.

    See Seo, Virtual Foreign Bureaus and the New Ecology of International News.

  35. 35.

    Neff, Venture Labor, 29.

  36. 36.

    See Ramesh, “The Outsourcing of Journalism.”

  37. 37.

    See Hardt, “Newsworkers, Technology and Journalism History.”

  38. 38.

    See Postigo, “American Online Volunteers: Lessons from an Early Co-Production Company.”

  39. 39.

    See Perlmutter and Hamilton, From Pigeons to News Portals.

  40. 40.

    See Livingstone and Asmolov, “Networks and the Future of Foreign Affairs Reporting.”

  41. 41.

    See Hossain and Aucoin, “The Ethics of Care as a Universal Framework for Global Journalism.”

  42. 42.

    Ward, “Philosophical Foundations for Global Journalism Ethics,” 15.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Soomin Seo

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  1. Soomin Seo
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UBC Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Stephen J. A. Ward

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Seo, S. (2021). Ethics of Digital Verification in International Reporting. In: Ward, S.J.A. (eds) Handbook of Global Media Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32103-5_22

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