Times fails media ethics 101

Just when you thought it safe to follow the news without yet another Ferguson-related story, the New York Times and Fox News have entered the mud-fighting fray.

Fox’s Howard Kurtz, hardly an unbiased Fox News Channel journalist, accused the Times of making a “reckless move” in publishing the approximate address of Darren Wilson, the police office who shot and killed Michael Brown in August.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/11/26/new-york-times-responds-to-criticism-about-darren-wilsons-address/

FoxNews.com subsequently said the Times had “endangered Darren Wilson’s life.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/26/reckless-move-ny-times-publishes-darren-wilsons-address/?cmpid=cmty_twitter_fn

While admitting its journalists had mentioned Wilson and his wife owned a house in Crestwood and referenced the street name, the Times said the full address was not published, and that the address was no longer current.

The Times added: “With the benefit of hindsight, even publishing the street name may have been unwise in such an emotionally fraught situation. But the reality of what was published bears little resemblance to what The Times and its reporters are being accused of — and pilloried for.”

http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/should-the-times-have-left-it-out-and-what-exactly-was-it/?smid=tw-shareu

This is not to deny such identifying information had already been published for the past few months in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and all across the Internet.

So as the repetitious flood of Ferguson who said what, where and when followups drone on, one can only imagine what media-related stories journalists might have missed during the past four months.