The ethics of re-writing someone’s personal story

When a famous actress writes a really personal piece about having a double mastectomy, is it ethical to do a detailed re-write to boost traffic to your own news website?

This is a tricky post to write because I could easily be accused of doing the thing I’m criticising. For this reason, I haven’t tagged this post with the actress’s name, I’m only mentioning her name when necessary, and I’m doing bad SEO (search engine optimisation) practice with my links – other than the link to the original piece.

That piece is My Medical Choice by Angelina Jolie, in the New York Times. You should go read it. I have no idea if the decision to tell the world was easier or harder than the decision to have the procedure, but I tell you what, that’s a pretty fucking tough year she’s had.

So. Given that millions and millions of people will want to read it – and that she wrote it for a particular news organisation, rather than, say, putting out a media release – how ethical is it for other news organisations to write their own highly-detailed versions so they get a piece of the traffic?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It’s just an ethical question. What makes me uncomfortable is different to what makes other people uncomfortable, and regular readers will know that I probably think too much about this stuff.

Fairfax’s Daily Life writer Natalie Reilly has done a re-write, with a screaming headline that includes all the terms people would be searching for. It’s good SEO practice and therefore it’s good for traffic to dailylife.com.au.

However, it isn’t until halfway through Reilly’s re-write that she tells the reader the info comes from a piece in the New York Times. When you’re doing a re-write, that information should be mentioned – and hyperlinked – in the first or second sentence. No later. You need to make it very clear that you are writing about someone else’s work. These are the rules I stuck to when I was a journalist and they are ones I stick to now. On top of that, there’s so much detail in Reilly’s piece that there’s little reason to read the original. To me, that’s unethical. You might feel differently.

(Oddly, Sarah Berry has also done a re-write for smh.com.au, so they have two versions on their website. Berry’s is better, in terms of clearly and prominently telling readers to “click here to read Angelina Jolie’s piece in full” at the start and end. It also gives information about the procedure in Australia, so it’s not solely a re-write. However, I think it also gives enough information that readers won’t go any further. I’d be interested to see their stats on how many readers did click through to the original, but of course they will never release that info.)

Re-writes are common practice in newsrooms. It’s how you share another organisation’s work with your audience when you don’t have permission to use it. Wire services send them out all the time. I don’t think re-writes are necessarily bad, but you need to be clear that it’s a re-write. You also need to be really obvious in pointing your readers to the original, in a way that makes them want to go to it, and part of that is not telling the whole damn story in your re-write. Otherwise, you’re essentially just passing someone else’s work off as your own.

I don’t want to single Reilly out, because News Ltd sites also have re-writes of this story, but they aren’t bylined. The piece dailytelegraph.com.au was running this afternoon has been replaced by the news.com.au version. It’s worth seeing the story on dailytelegraph.com.au, just so you can see what happens when you don’t pay attention to your images. Just like the Fairfax pieces, News Ltd’s re-write also leaves the reader with little reason to go to the original. Plus they throw a million links and galleries at you to make sure you’re too distracted to leave the website. Clever, I suppose, but very messy.

Now, I’m not so naive that I think online news is just about reporting news for the good of the people. Of course it’s about boosting traffic for advertising purposes. I’m also not so naive to think that a story about Angelina Jolie and her breasts wasn’t going to make news around the world. But given the highly personal story she’s telling, a better approach would be to say “hey, here’s a few lines of it, go read what she wrote, in her own words and not in ours”. Yes, you still get the traffic, but you don’t look like a jerk.

The 60th Down Under Feminists Carnival

Welcome everyone to the 60th Down Under Feminists Carnival!

International symbol for women, with the Southern Cross inside it.

The DUFC is a monthly round-up of some of the best online writing in Australian and New Zealand. It’s hosted by a different blogger each month, and April 2013 means we’re up to 60. Pretty sure that means you all have to give me diamonds.

So, make yourself a cup of tea and put on your reading pants, because TA DA!

Bodies – what we put on them, how we feel about them
How to lose the body judgement by Kath at Fat Heffalump:

“I was thinking a lot about the self hatred that so many women project on to others on these comment threads, either individually or fat women in general, and what really strikes me is that we’re never actually taught how to NOT judge people.”

Friday Frock: Compare and Contrast by meganwegan at Craft is the New Black.
Pics or it didn’t happen by Rachel Hills at Musings of an Inappropriate Woman.
Despite the gym we are fatter than ever by Mindy at Hoyden About Town.
Musings on 35 part 2: The personal “body shame” issue by Utopiana at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist.

Sex and relationships
The fcukless zip and Tony Abbott by Jennifer at No Place For Sheep.
Relationship phrases we should probably retire by Can Be Bitter.
Sexless frumps by Mindy at Hoyden About Town.
Who’s the man? by Rebecca Shaw at The King’s Tribune.

Media – stuff in it, stuff about it
Fairfax’s sense of gender balance by Wendy Bacon.
Real beauty? by Awesome Frances at Corpulent:

“This Dove ad tells us is that it is also not enough to be merely beautiful, you have to know it too.”

The Official Lady #QandA drinking game by Eliza Cussen at Fit it, Dear Henry.
Women writers, ‘brands’, and the politics of the personal by Sarah at Maintain the Beige.
Each woman must be assessed by me, here.

Religion
No girls allowed by Deborah at A Bee of a Certain Age.
ANZAC Day and religious rhetoric by Chally at Zero at the Bone.

Violence and harassment
Can we please stop comparing rape to mugging? by Can Be Bitter.
Sex Offence Sentencing: Are sentences for sex offences appropriate? by Holly at Confessions of a Stuffed Olive.
Being in public while female by Jo at A Life Unexamined.
Women as public property by Jessamy at You Are Doing That Wrong.
NSW Police and the vigilance warnings by me at The King’s Tribune.

Parenting
In defence of mummy blogging by Cristy at Larvatus Prodeo.
Framing the judginess of Plunket by Deborah at A Bee of a Certain Age.

Politics and society
On the politics of criminalising the persecuted by Jennifer at No Place For Sheep.
I am not a widget: privatisation of social services by El Gibbs at bluntshovels.
The Greens hate fat people too by QoT at Ideologically Impure.
So it turns out political candidates are legally allowed to lie to you by Eliza Cussen at Junkee:

If voters want to make the informed decision required of them in a successful democracy, it is up to each of them to Google every claim made in every election ad, and fact check them before deciding their vote.

Piers Akerman – Dinosaur Extraordinaire by Chrys Stevenson at Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear.
The challenges of being a Muslim woman in a multicultural society by Ghena Krayem at Right Now.
Voluntary segregation by Anjum Rahman at Stargazer.
The Politics of Exclusion by Stella Young at Ramp Up.

Feminism
Is the corpse of feminism revived and stirring? by Tatum Street at lipmag.
Elite feminism. Who is it good for? by Jennifer at No Place For Sheep.
The fantasy of women’s collective historical identity by Chally at Zero at the Bone.
Deadly Bloggers Challenge Week 15: Dear Concerned Feminists by Sarah Jane Innes at Sarah’s World of Procrastination.
Some women want to stay home with children and feminism needs to make peace with that by Andie at Blue Milk.

Great posts that didn’t neatly fit other categories
Vale Chrissy Amphlett by Kath at Fat Heffalump.
Attention, Whore! by Jessica Alice at Hersute.
The Tale of the Feminist and the Pop-Culture Convention by Jo at A Life Unexamined.
Songs I Listen To While Running #3: “Bad Reputation”, Joan Jett by Can Be Bitter.
And, of course, The Australian Cat Ladies.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who wrote the posts and sent me posts, and to Rebecca D and Chally for their help. Eddy at Maybe it means nothing is hosting the next carnival. Submissions to wilddamon [at] gmail [dot] com or the blogcarnival submissions page. If you’d like to host the DUFC, contact Chally at Zero at the Bone.

Update 6 May:
Oops, forgot to include a couple of links.

Retro arguments & division by Amy Gray at Pesky Feminist:

If articles continue to present feminists and stay at home women as different or in opposition, it presents the truly bizarre notion that women can only be one or the other, incapable of nuance or being a whole or complex person capable of multiple choices, talents and desires.

Why media gender equality matters by Violeta Politoff at New Matilda.

What do I do now?

I’ve reached the point where I need to make a tough decision about my doctorate. I’m three years in, finishing December next year. I don’t have three years of work behind me. I have three years of wasting time and worrying, punctuated by brief periods of working on it. I think the fact that I’ve been sick for almost two months isn’t helping things. However, my entire life has taught me that I am very good under pressure and always come good at the end. I am confident that I’ll finish it, but I don’t know if I want to.

Update: I should point out, I’m not stressed at all by the doctorate or the work. I’m very “yeah, whatevs” about the whole thing. It would probably help if I was more stressed.

Pros
I get to be called Doctor.
I love my topic (how young adults get their political news).
I wanted to do a doctorate because I’ve never had a job that challenged me and figured this would. It does, and not always in the way I expected.
I’m very good with external deadlines, so as it gets closer, I’ll feel more excited and my work rate will increase.

Cons
I am sick of having no money.
I am sick of worrying about having no money.
I am sick of relying on ManFriend financially.
Days slip by and I have nothing to show for it.
I spend too much time by myself and I’m sick of my own company.
I don’t feel at all connected to my university.
I don’t want to be an academic.

So, what do I do now? Do I walk away, or keep at it?

Each woman must be assessed

This thing that’s going on lately, where women in public roles are assessed one by one and declared Feminist or Not Feminist, is a bit shit.

Gina Rinehart, Julia Gillard (many articles in The Australian which I’m not linking to), Taylor Swift, Marissa Mayer, Beyonce. And now, Margaret Thatcher (in a piece that fails to explain why being a bad-ass Prime Minister makes her a feminist, but if you’re going to read it, make sure you read this Hadley Freeman one afterwards).

Don’t get me wrong, it is important for feminism to be a natural part of our public discussion. And it’s important that our public discussion includes rad fems and lib fems, because feminism isn’t a monolithic beast. There is still so much to fix and I think we benefit from having different voices focus on reproductive rights, violence, everyday sexism, women in management, equal pay, women’s voices in the media, parenting, and poverty. For one person to fight on every issue would be exhausting. Attack from all sides! But I just think that whether or not individual women identify as feminist is less important than talking about the other shit we have to fix. Besides, holding women up, one by one, for the public to assess them isn’t all that different to the “who wore it better” and “stars without make-up” sections in celebrity magazines.

The thing is, while we’re discussing whether or not Gina Rinehart is a feminist, who’s writing articles about how women account for only 13 per cent of managers in the mining industry, and what can be done to fix that?

While we’re talking about whether or not Julia Gillard is a feminist, who’s writing about the fact that the LNP and ALP support so few female candidates in winnable seats that in federal parliament, women make up 24.7 per cent of the House of Reps and 38.2 per cent of the Senate.

While we’re talking about whether Marissa Mayer is a feminist, or criticising Sheryl Sandberg because her book is for some women and not all women, there’s less space to talk about sexism and misogyny in the tech industry. Yes, these things are talked about on twitter and on blogs, but I mean in the mainstream media so it reaches a wider audience. There is precious little room there so we shouldn’t waste it by judging women who are at the top of male-dominated industries, rather than looking at those industries and why so few women make it to the top.

Over the last 18 months, feminism has become mainstream – largely thanks to the middle-class feminists who are now being mocked for their efforts because apparently, in the she-pee contest about who is doin’ it right and who is doin’ it wrong, being middle-class means your opinion doesn’t count. Are we really going to use income levels to judge who has a right to speak and who doesn’t?

We have a great opportunity here. Feminism isn’t going to be mainstream forever, but while it is, we need to get in there and fix shit.

(There’ll be a delay in pubishing comments this evening – I’ll be at the very first Tipsy Rabbit, a panel discussion with Sevana Ohandjanian, Caitlin Park, and Richard Cartwright talking about music and writing about music. Doors at 7pm for a 7.30pm start, Red Rattler, Marrickville.)

The Tipsy Rabbit

What are you doing on the 10th of April?

If you’re in Sydney, come to the very first Tipsy Rabbit.

The Tipsy Rabbit - for drinkers with a reading problem

The Tipsy Rabbit – for drinkers with a reading problem

The gorgeous Jen and I decided that writer talks should be more rowdy, with performances and dancing. So we’re putting one on in a very cool venue, the Red Rattler in Marrickville.

It’s going to be a bi-monthly event, and the first one is on music. Singer-songwriters Caitlin Park (music winner in the 2012 Spirit Of Youth Awards) and Richard Cartwright (from Richard in Your Mind), and music-journo-who-just-got-back-from-living-in-Berlin-and-we’re-insanely-jealous Sevana Ohandjanian will talk about writing music and writing about music, and it’ll be great fun.

You can also ask them questions. And, if you ask them nicely, they might even perform a song or two.

Afterwards, there’ll be drinking and dancing, because it’s the Red Rattler, after all.

Details at The Tipsy Rabbit.

Come along, it’ll be rad!

How much do we need to know?

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Warning – this post discusses sexual violence.

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How much do we need to know about what Adrian Bayley did to Jill Meagher? (Please note: Bayley has pleaded guilty to one count of rape, and not guilty to murder. The first sentence is about what he has pleaded guilty to.)

How much do we need to know about her personal life, in order to know that she was a real person who could be happy, sad, complicated, simple, hard-working and slacking-off, who made plans for her future, just like everyone else?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do know that the level of detail being reported makes me uneasy. There is a line somewhere between humanising someone by reporting the details of their life, and slobbering over the details of their life. And I think the MSM is jumping back and forth over that line with each story.

I’ve often criticised the MSM for forgetting that they are reporting about real people. This is a particular problem in online newsrooms where the person putting the story into the CMS, giving it a “catchy” headline and adding photos, usually isn’t the person who wrote the story. The further you are away from conducting the interviews, from witnessing the grief, the more likely you are to see the story as just a bunch of words to dress up to attract readers. Hence the online headlines that list the brutal details of what Bayley did and is alleged to have done.

This post is about stories I’ve seen on abc.net.au, heraldsun.com.au and theage.com.au, and the photos in them. I am not going to link to any of these stories. If you want to see the photos I’m talking about, you know how to use the internet.

Do we need to see a close-up photo of a bin in the laneway where Adrian Bayley raped Jill Meagher? Of course there is value in marking a place, in saying “this is where something horrible happened” so that people know it. But a close-up of something as impermanent as a garbage bin? What purpose does it serve, other than to say “check it out, this is the exact spot, is that red stuff on the bin blood, did he put that dent in the fence?”. I don’t pretend to be a good person who doesn’t think these things – I am just as guilty of rubbernecking as everyone else.

Do we need to see a photo gallery of what Jill Meagher had in her handbag? No, we really don’t. Yet there are galleries of the contents of her bag on abc.net.au, theage.com.au and heraldsun.com.au. And probably more news sites around Australia, but I didn’t want to look.

Do we need to see a police photo of the boot of Bayley’s car? Do we need to see a police photo of the shovel he allegedly used? Both heraldsun.com.au and theage.com.au ran those photos. According to the story on theage.com.au, “Deputy Chief Magistrate Felicity Broughton agreed to allow media access to the police brief of evidence against Mr Bayley”. We all know what a shovel looks like. We all know what the boot of a car looks like. Readers are not being asked to weigh up the evidence and decide Bayley’s fate. So why publish them, other than to give those readers the opportunity to examine them for gory details?

Do we need to know how many times he may have raped her? Shouldn’t that be one of those details that, out of respect, is left inside the courtroom? Most journalists will answer, “it was said in court, so that’s a public place”. But there is a HUGE difference between the small audience in a courtroom – mostly family and friends of the victim and the accused – and the massive audience of a major masthead. Particularly once you put it on the internet, where it will be there for years and years.

Do Tom Meagher and the McKeon family need to have a dozen cameras shoved in their faces as they leave court? Of course they don’t. They aren’t on trial, they’re just trying to get somewhere they can grieve in private after hearing the details in court.

The Media Alliance Code of Ethics says:

11. Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude.

The News Ltd Code of Conduct says:

Reporters and photographers must always behave with sensitivity and courtesy toward the public, and in particular towards those involved in tragic events. No one should be put under pressure to be photographed or interviewed.

The Age Code of Ethics says:

14. People should be treated with sensitivity during periods of grief and trauma and wherever possible, be approached through an intermediary.

16. Photographs of victims or grieving people should not be published unless due consideration has been given to issues of sensitivity and privacy. Any restrictions placed on the use of photographs supplied by family or friends should be honored.

17. Gratuitous references to the state of a victim’s body or body parts should not be published.

The footage I’ve seen of Tom Meagher and the McKeons having to push past a bunch of journalists, camera crews, and photographers, all snapping away, shouting questions and filming, goes against all of these codes.

There’s a wider discussion to be had here, about what should be shown and what shouldn’t be shown. Particularly as these stories get reported all around the world. When someone takes a gun into a school and starts shooting children, should the media make him famous? On the other hand, if his identity is just a minor part of the story, it removes him from his crime. Should we just have a special rule for media reporting of gun massacres? What about suicide bombings? I’m convinced that if newsrooms showed what a suicide bomb looks like, if they showed the most gut-wrenching scenes of swollen bodies with their clothes burned off, there’d be a lot more public noise about peace. But I can’t reconcile that complete intrusion into the privacy of death, with my belief that reporting is often gratuitous.

I’m not suggesting that journalists shouldn’t report the details of someone’s crime. What I am suggesting is that with every detail, journalists need to ask themselves: am I crossing that line? Is this relevant, or is it gratuitous? In my experience as a journalist – admittedly a few years ago now – when questions are raised in the newsroom, the answer is always, “just fucking do it now, and we can talk about it later”. But there never is a later because there’s always another story that needs to be done, always another earthquake near a Pacific island so you have to call resorts to ask if anyone is dead as though they don’t have more important things to be doing than talking to a journalist in Australia, and there’s always another gallery of a crime victim’s belongings that needs to be created.

I don’t have the answers. But I think it’s something we need to talk about. And journalists need to be a part of this discussion.

Warped reporting at Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph

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Trigger warning – this post discusses sexual violence.

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It’s tough being a woman. We just walk down the street and then, out of nowhere, an assault happens to us. We need to be particularly careful of these disembodied assaults that just hang around until they can happen at someone. At least, that’s the impression I get when journalists report on violence against women: men don’t assault women, it’s just that women have assaults happen to them.

Today’s story is awful. On Sunday morning, a group of men kidnapped a woman and raped her. I can’t imagine how terrified she must have been and how much it must have hurt. I can’t imagine how any victim of a crime like this copes in the weeks, months, and years afterwards. I really hope that this post does not add to her trauma because that is not my intention at all. My intention is to make journalists think about why they report violence against women in a way that almost removes the perpetrator from the crime.

AAP was the first to report the story. On dailytelegraph.com.au they headlined it Sydney woman abducted and gang-raped by group of men, police say. On smh.com.au they headlined it Sydney teen abducted and sexually assaulted by gang. They are both passive sentences – generally frowned upon in journalism. But it becomes more sinister when you consider that passive sentences are usually used to deflect blame, to be vague about who is responsible, or because the person responsible is unimportant.

Four hours after they published the AAP copy, smh.com.au had an updated version (with two bylines and an additional nine words): ‘I don’t think it gets more serious’: woman gang-raped after men ask for directions, police say.

Call me crazy but I think the men did something more serious than ask for directions.

The journalist (Rachel Olding) even includes this sentence at the end:

The victim, who was not affected by alcohol at the time, has been receiving intense counselling and is being supported by her family, Detective Superintendant Kerletec said.

Now, I don’t know if Olding asked the alcohol question, or if another journalist asked it and she reported the answer, or if Kerletec anticipated the question, or if Kerletec believes it’s important, but how is it relevant to a story about other people committing a violent crime? What do journalists think it actually means if she had been drinking? That the crime those men committed is less of a crime? That it’s somehow her fault? That it’s ok for a group of men to assault someone who has been drinking? What? They obviously think it means something important, otherwise they wouldn’t have asked. I’d really like a journalist to let me know why they asked the alcohol question – why they always ask the alcohol question – because I’ve been a journalist and it never occurred to me to ask it.

Here’s the story on smh.com.au:

Standfirst reads: Teen allegedly gang raped after being forced into car by group who asked her for directions.

Standfirst reads: Teen allegedly gang raped after being forced into car by group who asked her for directions.

The men who committed the crime aren’t even mentioned.

Compare that to another crime story below it:

Standfirst reads: Four men attempted a brazen armed robbery near a Sydney shopping centre, witnesses say.

Standfirst reads: Four men attempted a brazen armed robbery near a Sydney shopping centre, witnesses say.

If the robbery story was reported the same way as the assault story, the standfirst would read: “AN Armaguard van was attacked early this morning while parked on a street in Glebe.” It might even include this sentence: “The van, which was not affected by alcohol at the time, had previously been at a bank where it collected a large amount of money.”

But wait, there’s more.

In one story, ‘I don’t think it gets more serious’: woman gang-raped after men ask for directions, police say, the criminals are barely mentioned in the first two sentences:

Police say an alleged gang-rape attack on a teenager in Sydney’s north-west is “as worse as it gets”.

The 18-year-old woman was abducted and sexually assaulted by a car load of five men after leaving a house party in Baulkham Hills on Sunday morning, police said.

In the other, Shot fired at Broadway: gang attempts to rob van, the criminals are the main part of the first two sentences:

Four men have attempted a brazen armed robbery of a cash-in-transit van outside a Sydney inner-city shopping centre, witnesses say.

A witness to the incident said three of the men approached the Armaguard truck armed with firearms outside Broadway Shopping Centre at 8:30am on Monday.

Two crime stories, both involving gangs of men, but reported very differently. Why is that?

Here’s the story on dailytelegraph.com.au:

Standfirst reads: A YOUNG woman has been abducted and sexually assaulted by a gang of men after leaving a house party in Sydney's northwest.

Standfirst reads: A YOUNG woman has been abducted and sexually assaulted by a gang of men after leaving a house party in Sydney’s northwest.

The bit mentioning the gang of men is tucked into the middle of the sentence so you don’t really notice it.

Now, compare it to the story below it on the homepage:

Standfirst reads: TWO priests are under investigation by church authorities in Australia and the UK amid allegations they abused two boys in the 1960s and 1980s.

Standfirst reads: TWO priests are under investigation by church authorities in Australia and the UK amid allegations they abused two boys in the 1960s and 1980s.

The focus of sentence is the alleged criminals, not the victims. Again, the opposite of the way journalists report violence against women.

We get this constant stream of “a woman was abducted on the way home, a woman was sexually assaulted while drunk, a woman was assaulted in her home, a woman had something bad happen to her because she was somewhere late at night” because journalists pretend that assault just hangs out on the street waiting for a woman to walk past so it can happen at her. Assault is not something that’s just part of being a woman, like periods or a squirty bot bot after eating three-day-old takeaway that was a bit iffy. Assault is a crime committed by another person. Yet it’s reported as though that other person doesn’t exist. There are two options here: one, journalists don’t bother to think about the words they use; or two, they want us to believe that men aren’t to blame for the majority of assaults against women. So, journalists are either stupid, or they’re arseholes. I don’t know which is worse.

Update:
The smh.com.au story now has video. The caption reads: NSW police are warning women to be cautious on the street after an 18-year-old woman was abducted and sexually assaulted by five men after leaving a house party in Baulkham Hills.

No mention yet about NSW Police warning men not to rape women.