Journalistic integrity

Going through the usual suspects in the news today I came over two items that made me sit back and think a bit. The first is a story on the final build-up of the city council here in Bergen. The local paper, BT, ran a short story on one of the new members of the council. The article itself was the usual quality I have come to expect from the online division of th newspaper. The thing I reacted to was the fact box to the side of the article where all the members of the council was listed with name, residence, occupation today and then income, tax and personal fortune. Excuse me, but when did the last three become relevant to anything in the article?!

The other issue is less of a local one: I was reading a story on Sondre Lerche and his appearance on David Letterman titled ‘Se Lerche hos Leterman’ (See Lerche on Letterman). I found the story on the website of NRK, the largest broadcaster in Norway. As Norway’s largest broadcaster you would think that they would avoid linking to a YouTube video of a CBS show that is obviously a copyright violation. You would be wrong.

Where did journalistic integrity go? Putting a disclaimer alongside a link to an external page does not alter the fact that the story is titled ‘See Lerche …’ and indirectly advocating violation of copyright. (There is indeed a generic picture of Lerche performing, but we all know that’s not what the title was indicating.) I expect these things from some of the blogs I read, but I hold NRK and other publications to a higher standard. Now I’m starting to question if that is a foolish thing to do as they time and time again show where the real bar is set. And it’s pretty darned low