LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff Resigns

sachmet writes "In light of the interview with Fuat Kirccali, James Turner has announced on his blog the immediate resignation of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff." From the post: "We regret that Sys-Con Media has been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."

Comments

Honesty

[ninthwave]

It is nice to see some honesty and morals in the mess that journalism has become.

It is sad that it took this mess for it to be shown.

I wonder if slashdot might be hiring or its parent company might have a home for these people. Even if it is just for PR purposes.

Re:Honesty

[capt.Hij]

When Turner first acknowledged problems with the O'gara article he used some weasel words and stopped short of apologizing. I was critical of him and his staff, but now he has really stepped up to the plate and did the right thing. It will certainly be a costly action on his part, and he has shown a lot of class and integrity. I was critical of him before, but I was wrong.

Kudos to a group of people who made a difficult decision and did the right thing.

Good to see some people have integrity

[Anonymous Coward]

It is unfortunate that this had to happen but it is also unfortunate that many of the media owners seem to have lost their integrity.

I applaud the integrity of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff and wish them the best. Hopefully they will be picked up by a publisher that does respect journalistic integrity and just plain human decency.

Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[backslashdot]

These people who resigned because of their willingness to stand by their morals are welcome in my home any day.

If I owned a publishing house I would hire them immediately.

Re:In a Linux magazine you can't say...

[Pharmboy]

You need to do a little more research. Anyone can say anything negative about Pamela at any magazine. Publishing personal information for the sole purpose of inviting stalkers is not news or commentary, its predatory and unethical.

I don't always agree with Pamela's point of view, but I don't publish mom's address to invite harm to her.

The Proper Way to Respond to such things

[ZPO]

I find it highly ironic that a company such as Sys-con denigrates blogs as "not real journalism" while posting a link to start a blog on their home page.

The proper way to respond is to vote with your dollars.

1 - If you currently subscribe to a Sys-Con publication, cancel the subscription. Don't do this via email or a web form. Do it via a published toll-free number (this drives their telco costs)

2 - Check the advertisers list. If you've got a receipt for a purchase from a competitor laying around, send the advertising department of the Sys-con advertiser a POLITE and business-like letter. In that letter state that the broad facts of the case and that due to their continued support of Sys-con you've decided to make your purchases elsewhere.

Avoid the temptation to threaten fire brimstone, retribution, or DoS attacks. Such tactics are not in the best interests of anyone concerned. The LW senior editorial staff left via the moral high-road. Please ensure that any community reaction joins them there.

Re:award winning linux workstation

[kevcol]

Name the company. You don't work there anymore, so spill it.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[NtroP]

I want my reporters being willing to call bullshit on Clinton as well as Bush.

Ah, I think this is the rub. In many other posts we keep referring to these people as journalists. I think this is the problem with the media today. Everyone wants to be a "journalist" and no one wants to be a "reporter". What's the difference? Let's look at the two words: Journal and Report. When I write a journal I am perhaps discussing factual occurrences, but usually in a heavily personal (and therefore from a potentially personally biased) viewpoint. On the other hand when I write a report, I am simply collecting, organizing and analyzing facts. I should be including in my report where I got those facts and how reliable those facts are.

I feel that there are far too many journalists in the media today. They all want to present every story in such a manner that in reenforces their personal, political and/or social world view. There always seems to be an agenda. This is true whether it's MSNBC, CNN or Fox News. We as a society have become so inured to listening to journalists, editorializing (journalizing?) that we don't even realize it any more unless we hear a journalist from "the other camp" and then we just assume that "our" journalists are just giving us the facts and that "their" journalists are heavily biased.

All-in-all, my sense is that PJ does a good job of presenting the facts (she provides publicly verifiable sources) and when she provides opinions, I can usually tell they are opinions. But then again, maybe it's just because she's a journalist in "my" camp...

You know, just give me a good old-fashioned reporter and let me figure out where I stand on an issue. I'm a big boy, I think I can handle it.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in a followup interview, the guy who runs Sys-Con said that he saw nothing wrong with what O'Gara did, that it was ethical, moral and factually accurate, and that the only reason he caved was because the website was under a Denial of Service attack.

Basically, the guy is completely out of touch with journalism ethics and his own conscience, and even if they could ignore their ethical obligation to stand up to him (another journalist ethics thing), they can't be professionally associated with such a hack if they value their careers.