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| FASPE welcome sign. All photos by Beth Cortez-Neavel. |
Today was the first day of what will be a very long, heavy and fulfilling 12 days of immersion into the Holocaust.
I'm excited, terrified, nervous and extremely humbled to be one of the 14 FASPE 2013 journalism scholars. The Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics is an innovative program designed by David Goldman and others to expand the discussion of contemporary professional ethical issues. Through the lens of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and WWII, we are tasked with absorbing history, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses, and responsibly forming individual and professional ethical roadmaps. The program has four sections: Journalism, Law, Medical and Seminary. It's a relatively young program; the journalism section is only in its third year.
I and the other journalism scholars have an all-expense-paid trip to Germany and Poland to study the intense ethical reporting role of journalists during WWII. We'll be spending the trip with 14 law students. Journalists and Lawyers discussing ethics. What's not to love?
Today and tomorrow morning we'll spend time getting history lessons and touring the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York's Financial district.
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| Inside the museum looking out. |
Today we also had a great discussion with Kelly McBride, one of the Poynter Institute's ethics leaders. She spoke to us about the history of objectivity, majors historical events where journalism has failed, and the Poynter Institute's new idea of a code of ethics.
Most notably, McBride spoke on our failing ability as journalists to report on sexual abuse in society in a way that reconciles our fear of revictimizing the victim and dehumanizing the sex offender, with our need to tell both the macro and micro of damage done.
"The CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] calls it an epidemic for a reason," McBride said, "but journalists are caught not knowing how to tell the story."
We've told the Penn State scandal, the cover-ups by the Catholic church, sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts, and numerous children and youth being stolen off the streets by predators. But we have yet to find the appropriate vocabulary and have yet to quell our uneasiness in reporting the stories of children being abused by close friends and family members - which statistically is the most prevalent, making up for two-thirds of of all cases.
McBride also brought up the need for journalists to collaborate and work with non-journalists like advocacy groups and non-profits to do good, deeper investigative work.
The ever-transforming world of journalism faces a lack (and also a strange, unused plethora) of human-power and resources. I agree with McBroide that a marriage of the traditional media with active, empowered and focused organizations could greatly help our own ends to report the truths at both large and small scale.
But I wanted to know how we, as journalists, trust and collaborate with outside (usually sponsored or fundraised) organizations who could themselves be questionable operations. How would we hold these new partners accountable?
We need to hold them to the same level of transparency as ourselves, she replied. We should be spot-checking their sources and their data, just as we spot-check our own.
She pointed me to the Sunlight Foundation in Washington D.C., a nonpartisan non-profit which works for greater government transparency through data collection and policy analysis. I was also reminded of the recent Observer article I did based on Texans for Public Justice data, the Texan government transparency nonprofit did the legwork with resources and time I did not have, but I helped put their work into context and bring to a larger audience.
What if, my friends and colleagues, we continue cultivating such partnerships? Let's get our citizens more involved in the watchdog process!
Other tidbits from Kelly McBride:
Democracy cannot exist without true, uncensored journalism.
"Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical." -- KM
"When we're [journalists] looking for the truth we don't know what it is we're looking for." -- KM
If the institution of Journalism fails, then the individual fails.
"[Our importance is in] saying what we don't know, as much as what we do know."-- KM
And four new tenets of Journalism ethics: determine our values, set our principles, ask questions instead of making arguments, and search for alternatives.
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| New York sunset from outlook post near the museum. From May 26 until June 6, 2013 I took part in a study of journalism ethics through the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics. Graduate students in journalism and law met in New York, Germany and Poland to discuss ethical dilemmas in our professions during the Holocaust and the changing landscape of ethics today. |