Tag Archives: Washington Post

Social media are mixed blessings for journalists

It is hard to imagine life without social media – or to remember the world before it. Whether you love them or hate them, use or avoid them, social media have been enormously influential, almost as powerful as the internet itself. That is partly because even those people not directly linked, liked, shared or tweeted on social media find themselves inescapably swimming in the social media soup created by everyone else. Read More

Social media trap for journalists

Social media have become both a blessing and curse for traditional media but two recent cases at opposite sides of the world have shown that news managers have the ability to choose which they will be if only they have a better understanding of how social media policies relate to the ethics underpinning their core business, together with the nerve to apply that understanding when times get tough. Read More

Media generals leading from the rear

Arrests of working journalists by Australian authorities remain a continuing threat to media freedom in the country. Even when those arrests are not followed through to prosecution, they still send a chill through working journalists, impeding their efforts on our behalf. And while social media comes ablaze with indignation whenever journalists are arrested, the media companies themselves are often noticeably mute. Read More

When news hounds should back off

Disasters bring out the best and worst in us, magnifying both good and bad. Almost inevitably journalists will be condemned at some stage in covering disasters, especially when our initial shock wears off. It has been labelled disaster porn and few sectors of the media are spared, whether a camera crew chasing exhausted rescuers or newspaper photographs of dead or dying children. So how far should we go? Read More

Women and war reporting

More and more women journalists and female crews are reporting from the front lines of conflicts . Once almost wholly the domain of men, war reporting now seems to be open to women, but how true is that? And while women can bring an expanded skillset to the job, are we actually seeing that on our news pages and TV screens? What can we do to redress failures in assigning and valuing women war reporters? Read More