[Swift]

Discussion of the ethics of Buzzfeed publishing the documents

Some prominent journalists and media executives excoriated BuzzFeed.



“Even Donald Trump deserves journalistic fairness,” tweeted David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief who reported in October on the existence of – but not the contents of – memos from a “former Western intelligence officer”.


“Rare that a story stinks from every possible angle: the source, the content, the consequence, the messenger, the target,” tweeted Wolfgang Blau, chief digital officer of Conde Nast International and a former Guardian executive.
“Not how journalism works: Here’s a thing that might or might not be true, without supporting evidence; decide for yourself if it’s legit,” tweeted Brad Heath, an investigative reporter for USA Today.


Adam Goldman of the New York Times blamed CNN for opening the can of worms. “Sequence of events: @CNN finds way to talk about report and @buzzfeed uses that as reason to publish. Media critics are gonna be busy,” he tweeted.


On the other hand, Richard Tofel, the president of investigative news organization ProPublica, applauded Buzzfeed, saying “citizens should have evidence to consider for themselves”.
And the blog Lawfare said the allegations, though unproven, needed to be taken seriously because intelligence chiefs appeared to be giving them some credibility. Trump, it noted, had consistently rejected intelligence reports that Russia had hacked the US election.


“All of which is to say to everyone: slow down, and take a deep breath. We shouldn’t assume either that this is simply a ‘fake news’ episode directed at discrediting Trump or that the dam has now broken and the truth is coming out at last. We don’t know what the reality is here, and the better part of valor is not to get ahead of the facts – a matter on which, incidentally, the press deserves a lot of credit.”


https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...hics-questions