Discussion: Ethics in International Reporting
How can we tell the story without being exploitative?
“Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?”
Yazidi women and unethical journalism:
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/women-under-siege/study-85-percent-of-yazidi-women-interviewed-describe-unethical-journalism-practices
Mac Maclelland’s infamous live tweeting of a rape victim’s story: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-reporter-and-the-rape-victim/242445/
Is it ever okay to name rape victims, especially children?http://www.jinamoore.com/2010/02/05/rape-victims-nick-kristof-replies/
How Photography Exploits the Vulnerable
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/opinion/photography-exploitation-opioid.html
Avoiding troublesome tropes and cliches
How to write about Africa:
https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/
17 development cliches to avoid: https://brightthemag.com/17-development-clich%C3%A9s-ill-be-avoiding-in-2017-46c2345a507f
Asynchronous Assignment: The Beat Memo
First, we’ll workshop your ideas for semester-long beats together as a class.
Things to consider:
Is there a big enough population here in New York for you to find stories that will sustain you for a semester? If the community and/or you are not in New York, will you be able to get the access you need to do the kind of stories you want to do? (What medium do you intend to use for your stories?Will the time difference make this feasible?)
What’s going on right now in the country/place of origin? If there’s a big ongoing situation/story/crisis, that can often be a good place to begin in terms of finding local angles on these big topics.
Will you be able to get access to this community? Could a language barrier make reporting difficult? Will it take more time than you have to get contacts/sources to open up to you?
Is it reasonably convenient/feasible for you to spend time with this community, location-wise?
Assignment: The Beat Memo
Due date: Thursday, Sept. 10 by class time
Answer/fill in the following questions (if applicable). Be thorough; the final product should be at least two pages long, single-spaced.
Country/corresponding immigrant community:
How many live in the US? In the tristate area? How many in the home country?
In the tristate area, where do they live?
What jobs do a significant percentage of them have?
Why did they come? When?
What are some major organizations/advocacy groups/resources in this community?
Do they have local media house/s? If so, list them.
List/link the major media houses in the home country.
How strong are relationships with the home country? How significant are remittances to the home country’s economy?
In the homeland what is the GDP per capita? Where does that rank in the world? What are the major industries?
What is the system of government? When did this system come into place? Was there a colonial power? (Or was it the colonial power?)
Name of the NY consul general. How long has he/she been in the role?
Give three potential story ideas. (Doesn’t need to be a fully fleshed-out pitch yet, but should be well thought-out.)
And finally: Conduct an interview with a community leader. This initial interview should help you get a sense of what some of the issues are in the community, and help you get some story ideas flowing. Perhaps this community leader can recommend some other contacts for you to reach out to. You may use quotes or sound bites from this interview in one of your major story assignments this semester if it ends up being relevant.
Your beat memos should be posted on the class blog. The community leader interviews can be submitted to me either via transcript or audio/video recording, by email or wetransfer.com, which I recommend for large audio/video files.
By the way, if anyone wants a free NYTimes subscription: www.nytimes.com/CUNY