Newsphobia

Whether it is the latest celebrity gossip, candid shots or getting pictures of the latest car crash victim, journalists in newsrooms around the world are now scouring social networking sites for their stories. But questions are being raised about whether the increasingly standard practice of Facebook journalism is an ethical one.

Facebook places the responsibility for privacy firmly on their users by allowing users to determine who can see what information they list on their profile. Facebook’s privacy policy warns users to be aware of what information they post on Facebook as “this information may become publicly available”.

While most of the general public may rely on their relative privacy through obscurity, if they’re thrust into the public spotlight that information is there for the journalists’ taking.

One Sydney journalist said that his workplace had once blocked access to the Facebook site for all of their employees. He said once they realised it would be a powerful tool in investigative journalism, the employer unblocked it.

Sophie Tarr, an employee at The Australian Online, said she didn’t see a problem with using photos from Facebook. When Australia was in the midst of Olympic fever, Tarr was asked to compile a gallery of images of athletes Stephanie Rice and Eamonn Sullivan for the website. “I’d say about 1/3 of the images we had came from Facebook” Tarr said. “Once you achieve a basic level of fame you can’t expect to put up your drunk party photos up publicly without expecting Internet gawkers to see them”.

For Yasmine Mahmoud, who writes for Reportage, Facebook is just a way to look for interview subjects, “that is as far as I will go. I would never ever use infomation off of Facebook without permission. In fact I wouldn’t use information off Facebook at all” she said.

Mahmoud joins Facebook support groups related to her story topic and contacts members for comment. She said this practice has backfired on her, though. Mahmoud alarmed her friends when she joined a support group for suicide survivors”.

“I had people calling me from Europe to make sure I’m alright. You can imagine how embarrassed I was!” she said.

Freelance journalist and regular Facebook user Liam Casey gets annoyed when he sees the media use photographs from Facebook in stories, “it’s inappropriate and invasive” he said.

Casey said that taking the photos from Facebook is “akin to walking into a private residence and grabbing a photo off the wall. It’s rude, offensive and insulting for journalists to take their pick of images on offer.”

According to Casey, “journalists should respect the privacy of individuals when it comes to Facebook”.

Kim Balmanno, former Daily Telegraph journalist believes it’s inevitable that Facebook will be used, regardless of the ethical implications.  “Whether it is right or wrong, it is used constantly by media organisations and journalists alike” she said. Balmanno was working at the Telegraph when the Sydney Harbour boat tragedy occurred last year. Balmanno said that in the rush to identify the victims following the crash, journalists at the Telegraph scoured MySpace and Facebook for photos. The digital death-knock of the 21st century.

Nataly Kab, who was friends with one of the people who died in the boat tragedy last year, said after she’d left a tribute to her friend on his Facebook, she received a message from a Channel 7 producer requesting an interview. After not responding to his request, Kab was surprised to find out her tribute appeared on the news that night.

“The next day I found out I had been quoted on one of their news stories – they used my [rest in peace] comment from his wall as a direct quote!” Kab said. “I was disgusted to say the least. I just wish they had asked my permission, to be honest.”

While many see this as an intrusive breach of privacy, it has also worked both ways. The disappearance of Australian tourist Britt Lapthorne last year was only initially discovered by the media through a Facebook group one of Lapthorne’s friends created asking for information about her disappearance. Journalists at The Australian then went one step further to contact people via Facebook who had seen her partying at a nightclub in Dubrovnik the night before her disappearance.

On her blog Home Cooked Theory, University of Queensland Research Fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, Dr Melissa Gregg said journalists have a somewhat disjointed view of social networking. Dr Gregg said that her research has shown that in newsrooms around the country, “maintaining links on sites like Facebook is now a crucial part of the job”. She adds that Facebook “provides a convenient and ready-to-hand pool of commentators for stories going to air while the international distribution of a user’s network keeps them aware of stories breaking elsewhere”.

But she said this is contrary to how Facebook is often reported by the media. Dr Gregg believes that the media use “selectivity and sensationalism” when reporting on social networking sites. She highlighted the recent incident of personal details and photos of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s personal butler were leaked from Facebook that consequently led Rudd to banning all his staff from having Facebook profiles.

Dr Gregg said there still needs to be a discussion about the professionalism and ethics of journalists using Facebook in the newsroom but added that those in the media need to “stop exaggerating what happens online” because “networked computers are such a major part of everyday life in our much vaunted information economy”.

Questions remain about whether the information journalists use from Facebook is even reliable. The AFP in France last year banned the use of Wikipedia and Facebook by journalists after it was discovered that a highly publicised Facebook profile of the son of the late Benazir Bhutto was in fact a fake. A scenario that has been played out in Australia last week with the story of an AAPT employee who was caught out chucking a sickie via his Facebook profile. The story was widely reported in both the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald but later turned out to be entirely fabricated by the employee.

Last year, a report from the Australian Law Reform Commission examined the advent of social networking and recommended that the public should be educated about personal privacy in social networking environments and that privacy classes be incorporated in the school curriculum rather than reforming current privacy legislation.

A spokesman for the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance said he is currently investigating possible code of ethics. The Australian Press Council is currently debating on the use of photographs of children from Facebook being used by the media.

Similar Articles:

http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/08/facebook-journalism.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rory-oconnor/facebook-journalism_b_157920.html

http://reportr.net/2007/08/06/using-facebook-profiles-as-a-source-for-stories/