Verification and Journalism

Last weeks group presented on the topic of verification and journalism... an interesting topic for sure. They went over what verification means, keeping an accuracy checklist, how to stay objective and guidelines for anonymous sources which are all good things for journalists to not only be aware of, but to put into practice. The topic that I want to focus on is the idea of "How to stay objective" when doing a story. The guidelines are to never add anything that was not there, to never deceive the audience, to be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives, to reply on your own original reporting and to exercise humility. Some of these ideas can be hard to put into practice, but it is essential to stay objective in the stories that a journalist is reporting on.
One idea that has been very prevalent in the current news is stating opinion. There have been numerous examples of how simply stating an opinion can cause a journalist or reporter to loose their job. One such recent case is that of Juan Williams. Juan Williams worked for NPR and stated his opinion, publicly, about Muslims. He was fired for it. It has created a large debate and some of the links to articles about it are below.

http://www.therightperspective.org/2010/10/21/juan-williams-fired-for-opinion-on-muslims/

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/10/25/kevin-mccullough-juan-williams-npr-vivian-schiller-oreilly-psychiatrist-muslims/

http://www.libertyjuice.com/2010/10/21/juan-williams-fired-from-npr-for-voicing-opinion/