The Facebook Conundrum An Ethics Case Study by Gerald, Christina, Gwen & Deni

Background Info - Independent Founded by Paul Bass in 2005 Online, hyperlocal, non-profit news organization Covered news in New Haven, Connecticut Technology to revive traditional journalism Paul Bass 

The Murder On September 8, 2009, Yale doctorial candidate Annie Le went missing. As the national media soon descended upon New Haven over the next few days, Independent realized the impact of the story Because of their sources and familiarity with the community, they soon emerged at the forefront in the coverage On September 13, the day Le was supposed to get married, her body was found inside the walls of the Yale lab Annie Le 

Timeliness vs. Ethics Independent had the inside scoop when the police gave them the name of their chief suspect, Raymond Clark However, Bass decided not to release his name, even though they had the drop on all the other news organizations Raymond Clark 

Discussion #1 Should Independent have released Clark’s name when they got it or did they do the right thing in allowing other news organizations to identify him first? Is there any validity to Independent’s stance that, “We don’t want to be known as the paper that ruined someone’s reputation”?

The Plot Thickens The story continued to heat up as Melissa Bailey discovered a blog post written by Clark’s fiancée on Myspace. Since it was not private, it was public information that anyone with a computer could see Bailey chose not to use the woman’s name or photo Melissa Bailey 

Discussion #2 Was Bailey right to use any information found on the public Myspace blog? Was she overly cautious in not identifying the woman or was it necessary in minimizing harm?

The Ex-Girlfriend Marcia Chambers, an Independent reporter stationed in Branford, Connecticut (where Clark was from), started looking into his history before the other organizations even got his name She discovered a police record from 2003 filed by Jessica Del Rocco, Clark’s high school girlfriend The report said Clark confronted her and Del Rocco said he had forced her into having sex Independent went public with the story after Clark was identified by other news outlets, but did not identify Del Rocco until she went public a week later

On to Facebook Bailey friend requested Del Rocco and gained access to all her status updates after Del Rocco accepted Bailey had not identified herself as a reporter yet Del Rocco had known her ex-boyfriend was a suspect since a few days before and had posted a status about the news that Independent saw as newsworthy color. Jessica Del Rocco 

Del Rocco’s Status: “I feel like I’m sixteen all over again. It’s just [sic] bringing back everything. It’s been a rough few days.” She also wrote that she was “in total and utter shock” and that she “couldn’t believe this is true.”

The Dilemma Bailey asked Del Rocco via Facebook for an interview and identified herself as a reporter. Del Rocco declined the interview, but did not delete Bailey as a friend. Bailey and Bass were torn between whether they could ethically use Del Rocco’s status in a story. On the one hand, Del Rocco had given Bailey access to that status update. But on the other, she had declined an interview and there’s a difference between right to access and the right to publish

Discussion #3 If Del Rocco accepted the friend request, do you believe her status update was fair game? Since Del Rocco declined an interview, do you believe using her status update in a story would have been unethical?

Discussion #3 Would you have identified Del Rocco if her status was used in a story? Does the fact that Del Rocco had 350 friends change the perception that her status was “private”? What’s the line between a right to access and the right to putting that information in a story when it comes to social media?

The Decision Bass and Bailey decided to use the status update They did not identify Del Rocco, staying consistent with the decision to not identify her in the story about the police report from 2003 Do you believe they were justified? What would you have done differently?

Ethics Social media had not fully emerged into the monster it is today Not many precedents to draw upon before that case other than Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and Voinov murder in 2008 “Privacy is about intrusion rather than secrecy and the question is whether you have a reasonable explanation that something is private, rather than whether you have done or said something in public,” – Siobhan Butterworth, reader’s editor of the Guardian

Since then… We’ve come a long way with ethics in social media since then AP says that although journalists can friend sources, they can never simply pull quotes or other material from social media without directly informing the subject NPR has established their own social media team that attempts to verify information from online sources

Final Thoughts With all the knowledge we know have regarding ethics and the culture of social media, do you think Bass and Bailey would have made the same decision today? Would they still be justified in their decision today if it remained the same?