This is just worth sharing… Score one for ethics and leadership
NBC STATION IN L.A. ADMITS NOT LIVING UP TO JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS
from StudioBriefing, May 19, 2010
The NBC-owned television station in Los Angeles on Tuesday announced the departure of its “vice president, content” and simultaneously admitted that it had not lived up to “journalistic standards” when it aired a faked report about new credit card rules in February. In today’s (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times, media columnist James Rainey said that Tuesday’s announcements by KNBC-TV represented the culmination of a “psychodrama” at the station that “has pitted traditional television journalists .. against a nouveau crowd of content creators who prefer their sizzle served up hot, preferably without much steak.” In the faked report, Rainey said, the station hired reality show producer Vicki Gunvalson, who interviewed friends about the new credit card rules, then passed the friends off as ordinary “men in the street.” The interviews, Rainey indicated, were conducted at an Orange County boutique, owned by another friend of Gunvalson. A spokesman for the station told Rainey that it is “taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”
petershaplenproductions.com 
It surprises me how many people don’t realize the importance of ethics. I remember being in your class last year talking about this and many of the students did not seem to understand why there has to be ethics.
The age we are in now it is too easy to lie, cheat, and steal and get away with it. Even news sources that were reputably a few years ago have had major problems with falsifying facts so they can be the first ones on the net with the story.
And of course political and entertainment bloggers have made life a lot worse for all of us.
Good for KNBC. And when are they going to stop calling all that staged crap “reality” shows? Ms. Gunvalson wasn’t producing “reality” at all, and she had no business in a news department.
I weep.