Does this cross a line?

This isn't even about Facebook or privacy settings. If this girl had come in for an interview on a completely unrelated subject the day before, and willingly given all kinds of quotes, I'd still find it distasteful to use those quotes in a story about her death.

Personal quotes from a dead 17-year-old in this case isn't news or furthering the public's interests. It's just voyeurism.

 

I don't think a line was crossed here, although I also think that's because I believe the lines are becoming blurred these days.

My thought is that this was nothing more than an easy, available method that the writer used to get some information/insight into who this girl was, and to use it in what was, essentially, a featurized obit.

My issue would have been more with what posts were used, as they did seem particularly chosen in accordance with her death, with no other balance, context or perspective provided.

But TigerVols is right, in a way, too. Unfortunately, this is all just part of the way journalism is going/changing/evolving.

It is more of a free-for-all, there are fewer boundaries, and frankly, fewer concerns about ethics and more tendency to go the easy way and no deeper -- not just in journalism but in all things, in general. Facebook is just a perfect reflection of all that

This is a big problem, of course, but people of this generation won't/don't see it unless/until it impacts them directly. As Double Down wrote, the struggle is that people want a look-at-me lifestyle without any of the potential ramifications and consequences of that coming into play.

 

No line was crossed, but I don't think any real insight was gained by the Facebook items. Quite boring actually.

 

Does your paper publish people's home phone numbers in stories? Hell, does it publish business phone numbers in stories?

 

I think the context in which I was referring to phone-book listings can also be applied to Facebook postings, for similar reasons.

If I had a reason to print a listed phone number, such as in some kind of announcement where that was warranted and/or needed, then, yes, I'd be fine with publishing it. It is already published -- in the phone book. That was my point. Facebook entries, at least those accessible to everyone, are already published.

Just for the record, though, I personally do have problems with kids even having Facebook pages. If it was up to me, nobody under the age of 18 would be allowed to have a Facebook account. This example is just one of the many unforeseeable possibilities and reasons why.

 

Did anyone see the post's photo caption that said "Thai one on: Nicole John (with ambassador dad Eric, above) hit the beach in Phuket, Thailand, and the teen also liked to hit the bottle
Wow, that is stunning even for the post.

 

I don't think it crosses a journalistic line but it does serve no other purpose than voyeurism. I'm not sure a lot of writers would've bothered to go there in this case.

Like a lot of others here, I'm pretty surprised/disturbed by a lot of what people are willing to post on Facebook and similar sites. There's a very false sense of privacy around the site. I don't know. I consider anything I post on the Internet "out there," privacy settings aside. Maybe it's just part of my slow devolution into Luddite-ville. I do wonder how our expectations of privacy as a society are going to change, and I don't think that change will be a necessarily positive one.

 

Probably brushed against it, but I don't see ethical lines crossed here. It's the reporter's job to balance the public's interest in this tragic story and potential harm to the victim's family. The fact that the kid liked to party obviously factored in her death, and has some news value. I don't think it's dishonoring the kid to accurately report the circumstances surrounding her death, and her facebook quotes did shed light on it, so in that sense it's good reporting. Probably a little too much information pulled from the facebook page for my taste though. I'd have liked to heard from somebody who knew her, although that might not have been possible on deadline. The tragedy is the girl's death, not that her facebook page was quoted.