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 
Annie Le 
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
Raymond Clark 
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
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”?
Melissa Bailey 
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
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
Jessica Del Rocco 
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.
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?