‘Let me reiterate a principle of journalism: You contact the subject of a story and put the allegations to them before you publish.
Had you done so – contacted the NUJ or me, as you know I chair the Professional Training Committee – you’d have had an explanation.
The story would have been much less interesting. It would have been: Tired NUJ training chair, angered by poor journalistic standards on blogs, asks committee to engage with bloggers to try to raise standards.’
‘The NUJ believes that journalistic standards should apply across all media. If that sounds out of touch, and old-fashioned then sorry, I must be a dinosaur.
The NUJ fails to police those standards as well as it would like in the tabloid press due to the powerful media owners, weak industrial relations legislation, lack of a contractual right to refuse to do unethical stories and a host of other reasons.
The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards.‘ (emphasis mine).
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to add anything, except:
No comment needed on NUJ comment
Happened across this post, via Antony Mayfield.
Regardless of the actual post, what really caught my eye was in the comments by Chris Wheal:
First:
‘Let me reiterate a principle of journalism: You contact the subject of a story and put the allegations to them before you publish.
Had you done so – contacted the NUJ or me, as you know I chair the Professional Training Committee – you’d have had an explanation.
The story would have been much less interesting. It would have been: Tired NUJ training chair, angered by poor journalistic standards on blogs, asks committee to engage with bloggers to try to raise standards.’
Followed by:
‘The NUJ believes that journalistic standards should apply across all media. If that sounds out of touch, and old-fashioned then sorry, I must be a dinosaur.
The NUJ fails to police those standards as well as it would like in the tabloid press due to the powerful media owners, weak industrial relations legislation, lack of a contractual right to refuse to do unethical stories and a host of other reasons.
The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards.‘ (emphasis mine).
I’m pretty sure I don’t need to add anything, except: