Ethics and trust

1. WEEK 10: ETHICS AND TRUST
DEATH IN GAMBELLA: WHAT MANY HEARD,
WHAT ONE BLOGGER SAW, AND WHY THE
PROFESSIONAL NEWS MEDIA IGNORED IT.
Adam Weir

2. READING:
 McGill, Douglas, Jeremy Iggers and Andrew R Cline
(2007) „Death in Gambella: What many heard, what one
blogger saw, and why the professional news media
ignored it‟, Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22(4):280-299.

3. KEY TERM: ETHICS
 „The study which arises from the human capacity to
choose among values‟.
 „The central concerns of ethics: How are we to live
together? What is the good, the bad, the evil, the
just, the unjust, the unfair? How are we to
differentiate and choose between them?‟
 „Human history teaches us that it is our capacity for
goodness which makes ethics possible and it is our
propensity for evil that makes it necessary‟.
Preston, 2007

4. JOURNALISM AND ETHICS
 1. They shall report and interpret the news with
scrupulous honesty by striving to disclose all essential
facts and by not suppressing relevant, available facts or
by distorting by wrong or improper emphasis.
 2. They shall not place unnecessary emphasis on
gender, race, sexual preference, religious belief, marital
status or physical or mental disability.
 3. In all circumstances they shall respect all confidences
received in the course of their calling.
 4. They shall not allow personal interests to influence
them in the course of their professional duties.
 5. They shall not allow their professional duties to be
influenced by any consideration, gift or advantage
offered and, where appropriate, shall disclose any such
offer.

5.  6. They shall not allow advertising or commercial
considerations to influence them in their professional
duties.
 7. They shall use fair and honest means to obtain news,
films, tapes and documents.
 8. They shall identify themselves and their employers
before obtaining any interview for publication or
broadcast.
 9. They shall respect private grief and personal privacy
and shall have the right to resist compulsion to intrude
on them.
 10. They shall do their utmost to correct any published
or broadcast information found to be harmfully
inaccurate.

6. THE READING
Is about Douglas McGill, a former professional
journalist who worked for The New York Times and
Bloomberg News, who came to a moral crossroads
in terms of reporting an act of genocide by an
Ethiopian government which had gone unnoticed by
the global press.

7. READING IN SUMMARY...
 Douglas McGill was working as a volunteer teacher
of English as a Second Language (ESL) at a school
in Rochester, Minnesota.
 Many of the students were refugees from countries
that had been torn apart by war, but most notably
was Obang Cham, a man in his late 20‟s from a
small tribe in Ethiopia called the Anuak, a tribe of
people from a place called Gambella which is
invisible to the world.

8.  „On the afternoon of December 13, 2003, my
dilemma came to a head when my telephone
started ringing. Anuak men whom I‟d met in the
previous months told me a chilling story—that one
of the periodic massacres of Anuak men, women,
and children was underway at that very moment‟
(McGill et al, 2007).
 Anuak men in Minnesota were receiving telephone
calls from friends and families back home in
Gambella describing live scenes of the massacre
taking place.

9.  A total of 425 people were killed by uniformed
Ethiopian soldiers.
 Days following McGill checked all news institutions
for reports of the massacre, but „not a word on the
alleged massacre was published‟ (McGill et all,
2007).
 Eventually a United Nations wire item mentioned
that „there had been violence in Gambella, and the
Ethiopian government released a statement
reporting that „„tribal violence‟‟ in western Ethiopia
had caused up to a dozen deaths‟ (McGill et all,
2007).

10.  This wire report was a result of propaganda by the
Ethiopian government who blamed the killings on
the tribes people not the Ethiopian army.
 As McGill was a former professional journalist, he
started to build a report and gathered information
about the killings and assembled a large amount of
testimonies from the Anuak people who had
received live telephone calls from witnesses back in
Gambella (“earwitnesses”).
 He also had an interview with a man who was an
eyewitness to the massacre.

11. QUESTION: IF YOU WERE IN DOUGLAS MCGILL‟S
SHOES, WOULD YOU PUBLISH THAT REPORT?
Remembering:
 He is not backed by a news institution, therefore
any backlash the report can get will be on him as
an individual rather then against a news
organisation.
 He has no real “solid” evidence, only reports by
“earwitnesses” and if he was still a professional
journalist the material gathered wouldn‟t be enough
to accuse a government of genocide.
 There has already been a report by the United
Nations that had “officially” stated that the deaths
were a result of the tribes people.

12. „I felt in my gut that I knew something close enough
to the truth to publish. And my conscience told me it
was my duty to publish, because even up to
December 22, the day I finally did publish an
account of the massacre, not a single news
publication had done so. If I didn‟t publish, who
would?‟ (McGill et al, 2007)

13. As a result of McGill‟s article:
 An investigator was hired and sent to Ethiopia to
investigate the claims.
 All the crimes McGill had alleged the Ethiopian
government committed were supported.
 The media started to publicise the massacre which
took place.
 The Ethiopian opposition government officially
recognised the acts carried out by the Ethiopian
army to be of genocide and they now fight for
political change.

14. McGill was eventually hired by a news publication
Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Although this story has been recognised as being
factual, „to this day, the story of the Anuak genocide
has hardly scratched the surface of public
awareness in the United States. Although it is a
confirmed case of African genocide, not a single
minute of national network or cable TV news time
has been devoted to it‟ (McGill et all, 2007).

15. WHAT CAN WE DRAW FROM THIS?
For an act of genocide to not be publicised and still
be counted as un-newsworthy, yet one of the most
watched and followed news categories be
entertainment or celebrity news, it draws to the
failings of both journalists and the public equally.
„Entertainment values continue to trump news
values at journalistic institutions at all levels.
Pandering after lucrative readership demographics,
instead of illuminating public issues that affect all of
society, is how most news decisions are made‟
(McGill et al, 2007).

16. HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=J9UEO2Z
WGUA
If news institutions have abandoned their traditional
principles of journalism such as „providing citizens
with the information they need in order to
participate in democratic life‟ (McGill et al, 2007),
then should they still be classified as journalists?
Vs.
A blogger or citizen such as that in the McGill
Report where they step in and fill the void left by the
failings of professional journalism as they turn to a
more profit based model?

17. SOME ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS...
 Merina 2011 argues that, „some reporters are less
scrupulous about sources and accuracy, especially
when it comes to celebrity cases... some
magazines and television programs are so
dependent upon celebrities that they may hype or
soften stories to promote or protect celebrities‟
(Merina, 2011).
Therefore as a result of news organisations turning
to celebrity news, the journalism code of ethics are
commonly not followed, causing non traditional
forms of journalism to fill that gap.

18. Paul Farhi asks.... “if newspapers, online or on
paper, don‟t provide the resources to report on their
communities in depth, who will?” (Farhi, 2006)

19. „The same revolution in digital technology that is
undermining traditional news media is creating new
opportunities and possibilities— and a larger, more
active role for the public... Every citizen with access
to the Internet can become, in effect, a publisher,
distributing news and images to an ever-expanding
network. Had the events in Gambella taken place a
few years later, it is likely that some of the victims of
the attack would have had camera phones and
images to support their testimony‟ (McGill et al,
2007).

20. As traditional news organizations continue to face
the challenges of staying in business and shifting
the newsroom priorities, non traditional news media
will increasingly become a key role in reporting and
distributing public information...

21. QUESTION: SHOULD BLOGGERS AND ONLINE
CITIZEN JOURNALISTS HAVE A PROFESSIONAL
CODE OF ETHICS AND BE LIABLE IN THE SAME WAY
THAT PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS ARE?