Live from New York, it’s… the Republican primary season?

Comedy routines are bolstering the frontrunners’ campaigns… or so we think.

By Alyssa Sanford
for Magazine Writing (JPW 350-01) | 3/8/16

It’s getting hard to know where the Saturday Night Live sketches end, and the real campaigns begin.

Republican frontrunners Donald J. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz dominated the news cycle in the days leading up to and immediately following Super Tuesday, an evening where Trump snatched up seven out of 11 possible states, and Cruz secured his home state of Texas as well as neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska. Of course, the headlines reflected the looming inevitability of Trump’s nomination to be the GOP candidate, but something slightly less doom-and-gloom crept up on the horizon and encroached on the public’s consciousness.

That is, a viral six-second Vine of Chris Christie’s seemingly horrified expression as he flanked Trump’s shoulder at his Super Tuesday victory speech, set to the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme, replete with circuslike tuba music and slow zooms into Christie’s dead-eyed stare. It was, as TIME magazine declared, “the real winner of Super Tuesday.”

And in spite of the sensation of dread that accompanies Cruz’s mounting primary victories, the Internet rejoiced over a Bad Lip Reading video featuring clips from Cruz’s campaign videos with preposterous voiceovers about his appetite for human hair, and canned campaign slogans—“I Need a Bogel for the Glotch,” for example.

‘Facing the nation’ with an objective outlook: objectivity in media

By Alyssa Sanford
for Media Ethics (JPW 309-01) | 12/1/15

While CBS News has had some notable scandals in the past, its well-reputed Sunday morning panel program Face the Nation has maintained its journalistic integrity over its 61-year history.

That isn’t to say that viewers and media watchdog groups haven’t voiced concerns, particularly over the moderators’ apparent political biases—former moderator Bob Schieffer for his connections to George Bush, and current moderator John Dickerson for his gentle treatment of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a recent interview.

“Can he perform the role of objective moderator given the ‘difficult[y]’ of ‘cover[ing] someone you know personally’?” Nicole Casta of the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters for America wrote of Schieffer in 2004, when he was set to moderate the final presidential debate between his “golfing friend” George Bush and the Democratic senator John Kerry. Journalists wondered if Schieffer was capable of setting aside his political and personal affiliations in order to an objective and fair moderator.

Similarly, the conservative watchdog group Newsbusters accused John Dickerson of “fail[ing] to push back against [Clinton’s] standard talking points defending her e-mail practices” in a September 2015 interview, thereby revealing a liberal bias. As a moderator of weekly political panels, could Dickerson be trusted to keep his opinions out of the discussion?

All major broadcast news networks must strive to be as objective and unbiased as possible, but for shows like Face the Nation, accusations of bias are few and far between because of the level of professionalism.

The challenges of sourcing

By Alyssa Sanford
for Media Ethics (JPW 309-01) | 10/28/15

Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker of The Philadelphia Daily News understand how difficult it is to locate sources.

For their 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series, “Tainted Justice,” the reporters interviewed drug dealers, former strippers and colleagues of corrupt cops to uncover corruption within the Philadelphia police department’s narcotics task force.

A key source, former drug informant Benny Martinez, was also an addict and “a convicted drug dealer with questionable credibility,” the reporters wrote in their book, Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love.

These sources, while not the most trustworthy of people at first glance, provided detailed accounts that allowed Ruderman and Laker to pursue a lead on Officer Jeff Cudjik and his fellow corrupt officers. But many of these sources were nearly impossible to find, and often, they were scared to go on the record or wary of the reporters’ motivations.

Martinez was one of those sources who wanted to provide an anonymous account of his dealings with Cudjik. Yet the Daily News reporters couldn’t “allow Benny, a convicted drug dealer, to accuse a decorated cop of wrongdoing without using his name. Benny had to go on the record,” they wrote.

Clearly, sourcing is a constant challenge. Even so, good ethical journalists understand that locating reliable sources, verifying their accounts and maintaining a relationship with them is essential to good reporting.

Putting ethics codes in practice in the newsroom

By Alyssa Sanford
for Media Ethics (JPW 309-01) | 9/21/15

While it’s generally understood that ethics codes are “voluntary and cannot be enforced,” according to Gene Foreman in The Ethical Journalist, news organizations tend to adopt similar ethics codes because they are common practice in the field, but when it comes to politics, the codes are often different for each organization.

“Times are changing,” said Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Poynter Institute in a phone interview, referring to the way news organizations are adapting to a world where social media makes it difficult to completely obscure a journalist’s personal opinions.

As a result, media ethicists and prominent journalists are equally divided on the subject. Some believe that journalists have a right to express their political opinions, while others find that a journalist’s integrity will come into question if he or she actively participate in politics.

When reporting goes astray

By Alyssa Sanford
for Media Ethics (JPW 309-01) | 9/14/15

Compassion for an alleged rape victim, and fear of losing a crucial source, led Sabrina Erdely astray in her reporting for the November 2014 Rolling Stone article, “A Rape on Campus.”

It was a story that captured national attention, and a story that drew harsh criticism from the public and journalists alike when Erdely revealed that she harbored doubts about her source’s narrative just weeks after publication.

The editors at Rolling Stone who oversaw the publication of the article from its inception to its final draft consulted a team of media experts from the Columbia School of Journalism to examine the problems inherent in the article, and ran the report in an article entitled “‘A Rape on Campus’: What Went Wrong?”

Greek life hazing must stop, more punishments needed

April 1, 2015 | Alyssa Sanford, Signal Staff Writer

College fraternities all across the country are making headlines, from Penn State to the University of Oklahoma to Dartmouth College. Their misdemeanors are nothing short of deplorable, and the media storm swirling around them is more than warranted.

Still, the question remains: Are the repercussions strong enough?

Former University of Oklahoma student, and SAE brother, Levi Pettit apologizes for his actions

The public seems to think so.

Members of the University of Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity appeared in a viral video in the beginning of March, joining in a racist chant with references to lynching. The response was immediate: Within hours of the video leaking online, the University closed the chapter and forced members to leave the fraternity house. Later, two of the students leading the chant were expelled and have since made public apologies for their actions, according to the New York Times.

University of Oklahoma was lauded for its swift handling of the scandal. It denounced SAE and expelled the chief offenders from the University, much to the satisfaction of both the black student union on campus and the general public.

Net neutrality doesn’t allow for competition

November 19, 2014 | Alyssa Sanford, Signal Correspondent

Barely one week after Republicans crushed Democrats in the midterm elections, President Obama tried to pick up the pieces by introducing a polarizing piece of legislation: net neutrality.

It’s a divisive issue, but not just for Democrats and Republicans. Broadband companies and Internet-based corporations were also drawn into the fray following Obama’s November 10^th announcement that he is working with the Federal Communications Commission to prevent broadband companies like Verizon, Comcast and TimeWarner from slowing certain websites’ download speeds or increasing prices for consumers.

Why the Ebola hype shouldn’t scare you

October 29, 2014 | Alyssa Sanford, Signal Correspondent

We all know the facts: Ebola is a highly contagious and deadly disease, claiming the lives of thousands worldwide. According to CNN, this is the worst Ebola outbreak that the world has seen since the disease appeared in the 1970s. Doctors and aid workers are ill-equipped to contain the disease.

A woman adjusts her mask outside a closed-off building after an Ebola scare in Los Angeles. (AP Photo)

The mainstream media does a great job of whipping Americans into a frenzy because very few of us stop to consider the facts. What are the chances of the average American contracting Ebola and spreading it across the country?

The answer? Slim to none.

For one thing, the mainstream media focuses on the sheer number of infected patients outside of West Africa. Even though high-profile patients are now declared “Ebola-free,” new reports of patients in quarantine have appeared in the media. On Thursday, Oct. 23, amid reports that Amber Vinson, one of two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, was cured of Ebola, the news surfaced that a doctor in New York City was diagnosed.

Amazon faces federal investigation; Authors United angry

Amazon facing federal investigation for monopolizing e-book market

Amazon, a corporation currently inspiring equal parts fear and outrage in the publishing industry, has a serious force to contend with: hundreds of angry authors.

That’s right: Authors United, a coalition of over 900 writers both obscure and famous, is taking their grievances with Amazon to the Department of Justice. They claim that Amazon is practicing “illegal monopoly tactics” and that the company needs to be investigated.