Posts Tagged ‘Ethics’
Any local newspaper is only as big as the village/town/city/area it serves, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to attracting an audience online. In two years at the Sunderland Echo our most popular story by far has been the tale of two Wearside twins who revealed a secret double life of escorting and [...]
One staple source of stories for local newspapers is the RSPCA press office. The tales of cruelty we hear are routinely stomach-churning, but sometimes we get images that are genuinely shocking – even to hardened news hacks. A recent example of this involved photographs we received of a horse found dismembered in a river. The key image was gruesome; the animal’s severed [...]
Controversial comment sparked newsroom debate
November 20, 2009 in Behind the headlines
Tags: comments, Ethics, journalism, post-moderation, pre-moderation, racism, Sunderland Echo
Post-moderation of user comments is now the accepted safest practice for journalists. Pre-moderation opens us up to the risk of letting through an offensive or libelous comment in error, effectively endorsing it through our approval process. But there’s still confusion and differing opinions about how we should treat comments we don’t like once they go live. This [...]