Chicago reporter fired for unethical behavior

July 13, 2007 | Ethics,Journalism

Television news reporter Amy Jacobson lost her job at Chicago’s WMAQ-Channel 5 this week after another news station released a video of her in a swimsuit at the home of Craig Stebic, the subject of a news story Jacobson was working on. Stebic’s wife, 37-year-old Lisa Stebic, has been missing since April 30, and Stebic has been named a “person of interest” in the case.

Jacobson said she was invited to Stebic’s house to discuss the case on her day off. She was on her way to take her children, ages 2 and 3, swimming. After checking with her husband and her managers at the station, she and her children went swimming at Stebic’s home. WBBM-Channel 2 (another Chicago station) videotaped the visit from a neighbor’s house.

“My kids were in the car with me,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday. “It was a way for me to do my work and have fun with my kids. I never get to see them. I’m always working.”

Jacobson was reportedly fired for getting too close to the story or for briefing police on her interactions with Stebic without telling her bosses, depending on who you ask. People have been weighing in on the issue, including some journalism professors, who were asked, “Did she step over the line?” Here’s what they said:

While it is true that many journalists have friendships — often unwise friendships — the magnitude of this case, where there is a missing-person investigation, possibly a homicide investigation, is not the same as somebody who is covering the Knights of Columbus or the local Big Brothers. In this case, where it’s a missing-person investigation of this magnitude, any kind of friendship with someone involved in the story seems exceptionally unwise. — Bob Steele, Nelson Poynter scholar of journalism at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.

You just don’t do that. [The reporter] may be thinking she may get better material by getting close to these people … but you just don’t become part of their family, you don’t become their friend and you don’t go swimming in their pool. You don’t become part of the story — it’s unprofessional. — Joe Saltzman, journalism professor, University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications

If getting into a bathing suit is covering the story, I guess that might be OK. She has to weigh the information she is going to get against questions that will be raised [by those] who see her behavior. I don’t know the value of the information she might get for her story. — Felix Gutierrez, journalism professor, USC

What do you think?

Covering the war, part 2

July 12, 2007 | Death,Iraq,Journalism,Military

My newspaper published an article about a local soldier’s funeral (sans flag-draped coffin) on the front page … of the metro section.

What was on the front front page?

1) An article about the cost of copper.

2) The presidential race.

3) A Washington Post article about security.

4) A Los Angeles Times article about Lady Bird Johnson.

5) Teasers to the life and sports sections.

Thirty U.S. troops have died so far this month, yet this is the only article written in-house. The newspaper ran an Associated Press article about a sailor from the other side of the state, and numbers of deaths may or may not be mentioned in wire stories picked up about “incidents” in Iraq.

Covering the war

July 10, 2007 | Death,Ethics,Iraq,Journalism,Military

I don’t mean to diminish the South Carolina tragedy in any way, but why did this photograph bother me? It ran across the front page of my hometown newspaper — and probably countless others — on June 23, 2007. Was it an attempt to ease a collective guilty conscience for refusing to run photographs of flag-draped coffins every day that U.S. troops return home that way?

For the record, 12 troops died June 23, 2007, and 111 troops died during June. Fifteen were from California. Florida lost two soldiers on June 21, which would have been more “local” than a fire in South Carolina, but my newspaper didn’t write about either of them.

Remember this controversy? Maytag Aircraft, a military contractor and subsidy of Mercury Air Group, Inc., fired cargo worker Tami Silicio for “violating U.S. government and company regulations” for submitting a photograph of flag-draped coffins of U.S. troops to The Seattle Times, which published it April 27, 2004. Her husband, David Landry, who also worked for the contractor, was fired too. (More coverage is here.)

The Pentagon had banned the media from taking photographs of caskets being returned to the United States since 1991, and this incident did nothing to ease that ban. Even so, Silicio was not “the media,” and the only Maytag Aircraft regulations that seem to cover this issue fall under the vague blanket of “and other company regulations.”

Russ Kick of The Memory Hole filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act and posted photographs not published in newspapers.

Some politicians and editors say that publishing photographs of military coffins would be seen as an antiwar statement by the media. If I were to follow that logic, would not publishing them be considered a prowar statement?