British soldiers get paid for the story of their capture

The ethical outrage of this week has been the news that the British soldiers and sailors who spent two weeks in an Iranian prison after their capture in the Shat al Arab are to be paid to sell their stories to the British tabloids.
It created a bit of outrage in all the right places and led to accusations that they were now being used as propaganda tools by the British government. even though Tony Blair’s office has denied this as ‘outrageous’. The ex-captives’ colleagues are also taking the piss on several military-themed websites. It seems that the idea you sould be able to make money out of your suffering is anathema to the balls-out military tradition of take-it and suffer in silence.
There are serious issues though, such as the use of chequebook journalism and the role of the media in the way that the whole episode was reported. No one comes out of this looking good.

media ethics, journalism

welcome to this blog

This is my blog, I suppose all of you Cool Hand Lukes out there knew exactly what was going to go into your first post. I’ve got no idea.
This is a blog about journalism and ethics, it might also be about other things. Time will tell.

I recently arrived in Auckland, the commercial and media capital of New Zealand to take up a new job as Curriculum Leader, Journalism in the School of Communication Studies at AUT. By reputation it’s one of the best and biggest j-schools in the country and a challenge for me to lift the game – from being an Institute of Technology to being a university.

I’m also interested in media ethics. I’ve written a book with my colleague Roger Patching on journalism ethics and it’s just about to be released in a second edition.

I’m currently working on some case studies featuring New Zealand media ethics. I’m interested in hearing from people who have a story to tell.

media ethics, journalism