Fox accuses ABC of "Checkbook Journalism".

(I am not a fan of Fox, but this article condemns ABC for unfair media reporting and also complains that the National Enquirer may win a Pulitzer Prize. I guess it depends on how you look at it, from a financial [b]$tandpoint.)

ABC Is Guilty of Checkbook Journalism

Updated March 19, 2010
By Dan Gainor
FOXNews.com

The revelation that ABC News paid Casey Anthony $200,000 demonstrates how rapidly the media landscape is changing.

The term checkbook journalism has always referred to sleazy outfits so desperate to put some scandal in front of the public that they paid to get the story. That accusation now lands squarely on the desk of ABC News and the network is denying it lamely.

The attorney for Casey Anthony, accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, testified in court on Thursday that the client had been paid $200,000 by ABC, but that money was now gone.

ABC denies using checkbook journalism, but according to a FoxNews.com report the network "released a statement confirming it paid for licensed exclusive rights to an extensive library of photos and home video, but that no use of the material was tied to any interview."

Not that it matters. ABC is still admitting it paid $200,000 that aided the defense of a woman accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter. All that to get exclusive photos and video -- an appalling step into ghoulish, tabloid journalism for a major news network. The network has done at least 30 separate stories on the murder case since 2008.

Of particular note are the images of the defendant and her now-deceased child. On Sept. 5, 2008, ABC released "Never-Before-Seen Images of Casey Anthony and Missing Florida Toddler." The images included photos and video showing a seemingly happy family.

As ABCNews.com explained, "Intimate, never-before-seen pictures and home videos of the girl and her young mother offer a rare window into Caylee's life." And possibly a rare window into the news practices at ABC.

ABC's undisclosed purchase of those images would appear to violate up to seven separate categories of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. Those violations include one to "Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity" and another to "avoid bidding for news." The network could be criticized especially for failing to disclose the financial relationship while its staff raised questions about people bailing out the defendant.

Already, the Poynter Institute is saying ABC's failure to disclose its relationship with the defendant "presents a clear ethical conflict."

Ultimately, it shows how rapidly the media landscape is changing. The National Enquirer is being considered for a Pulitzer Prize for its work exposing John Edwards's affair and out-of-wedlock child. Meanwhile, ABC is accused of paying a woman accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/19/dan-gainor-abc-news-casey-anthony-paid/

It's hard for me to argue with anything said in this article. The 300-400 workers that ABC News is laying off are probably thrilled to hear about Casey's $200,000 payday.

It's really just sick how people can go to work every day for just barely enough to pay bills and eat etc, but a murderer can sell pics of the baby she murdered and make almost a quarter million dollars.

Here's another I just ran across...

http://www.aolnews.com

ABC News Paid Casey Anthony $200,000
Updated: 1 hour 42 minutes ago

(March 19) -- In journalism, paying sources for interviews is supposed to be a no-no. The promise of money in exchange for information violates the profession's ethical code and can often lead to dubious information.

But ABC News now says it paid $200,000 to Casey Anthony, the Florida woman accused of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, for exclusive rights to videos and pictures that ran on the network and its Web site.

ABC also conducted interviews with the Anthony family, but said in a statement that it paid only for images, never for interview access.

"In August 2008, we licensed exclusive rights to an extensive library of photos and home videos for use by our broadcast platforms, affiliates and international partners," ABC's statement read. "No use of material was tied to any interview."

The payments were revealed Thursday in an Orange County, Fla., court proceeding, which was concerned with whether Anthony can be declared indigent and thus receive a taxpayer-funded defense.

On Friday, Circuit Court Judge Stan Strickland ruled that the state must pay some of the cost for Anthony's defense to ensure that she receives a fair trial. Anthony's defense team, who said they are working pro bono on behalf of their client, told the judge Thursday that Anthony's money from ABC had already been spent.

"Ethically, ABC is on very shaky ground," Fred Brown, vice chair of the ethics committee at the Society of Professional Journalists, told AOL News. "It's essentially paying for news, and any time you do that, you taint the news."

Paying sources for information is the stock and trade of publications like the National Enquirer, which broke the story of John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter and also the news that the former presidential candidate was the father of Hunter's daughter, Frances. In many of the Enquirer's stories on Edwards, a source who remained anonymous was paid by the publication.

"Ideally, news should be produced without any money changing hands," Brown said.

Maybe this outing of ABC for paying a baby murderer for pictures of the baby will keep future payments to said baby killer and her parents to a minimum.....

I'm so glad ABC is getting what they deserve from these ethics committees.

Personally, I have no problem with NE paying someone for the tip about Edwards. Thank God we found out before the election, or we could have had this sleezeball in the white house. However, paying KC for pictures of the baby she, herself, murdered is just not right.

I have always preferred Fox news opposed to ABC, NBC or CBS. BTW, Fox news is not controlled by the Democrats, and seem to report unbiasedly on political matters.

You never hear about other murders selling the pics of their victims for money to defend themselves. Yet, still we see the news having hold of those pictures. I guess Caylee's pics were different since Cindy went and copyrighted her name and image etc. But nobody should have paid a dime for them no matter what!

$200,000 would have fed a lot of hungry people!

Confirmed blood money.......it's shameful to say the least.

just one of the many tragedies in this case.

kill your child, make a quarter of a million dollars.

i hope they are boycotted.. i am a fan of fox news anyways.

ABC News gets drubbing for $200,000 payment

posted by halboedeker on March, 24 2010 2:33 PM

The bad reviews just keep coming in for ABC News. Critics say the Disney-owned news organization was wrong in August 2008 to pay $200,000 to Casey Anthony and her family for photos and video of toddler Caylee Anthony.

“It doesn’t make them look very family friendly, does it?” said Andrew Tyndall, who analyzes ABC, CBS and NBC evening news at his Tyndall Report Web site. “It’s not just ABC News. It’s the entire corporation.”

“The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News seized on the Disney connection this week.

“This happened in Orlando. And Disney World is in Orlando,” author Bernard Goldberg told Bill O’Reilly. “And Disney World tells people from — from the United States, from Europe, from Asia, all over the place – bring your children, bring your children to Disney World. Well, not far from Disney World, another division of Disney, ABC News, is paying a woman $200,000 who’s accused of killing her child. There’s something ironic about that.”

After ABC’s payment, Anthony was charged with first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.

O’Reilly’s take on ABC’s payment: “It’s not a good thing.”

Seconding that view was the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee. In a statement this week, committee chairman Andy Schotz said, “Paying someone while covering them breaches basic journalism ethics. ABC’s failure to disclose this business relationship as part of its coverage the last two years made the breach worse.”

ABC News spokeswoman Cathie Levine told the committee that the network should have disclosed the payment to viewers and that ABC had instituted a policy — because of the Anthony mistake — to do so in future reporting.

ABC affiliate WFTV-Channel 9, however, had reported the $200,000 payment — in September 2008.

Revelation of the Anthony payment comes at a bad time for ABC News. “ABC has a lot going on right now — reducing your staff by 25 percent is a cataclysmic internal event,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that studies the business.

Yet Rosenstiel said the Anthony story reflects a trend in newsmagazines in recent years. In the mainstream media, paying for an interview is taboo. But newsmagazines will hire consultants or pay fees for video and photographs to tell a story.

“By and large, the networks will argue they aren’t paying for interviews, but money is changing hands and has been for some time,” Rosenstiel said. “The principle behind the idea that mainstream news organizations don’t pay is when you pay people you’re inducing them to make their story more dramatic. A tabloid pays for a more salacious story.”

Rosenstiel attributes the payments in part to the networks’ competing with the National Enquirer, TMZ, E! and other players in television.

The Anthony payment “raised eyebrows because the amount of money is high,” Rosenstiel added. “If the disclosure is embarrassing, then the cost of doing it was much higher than the money, and it wasn’t worth doing it.”

Network insiders say the standard licensing fee is far less. CBS News, for instance, paid George and Cindy Anthony, Casey’s parents, $20,000 to license material, and they appeared on “The Early Show” and “48 Hours Mystery.”

But Al Tompkins, an instructor at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, scoffs at the notion that journalists need to license any material to tell stories. After all, journalists have told stories without photos and video for a long time. But the ABC-Anthony story stood out.

“The amount of money is such an unreasonably high number,” Tompkins said. “You’re paying it to someone under suspicion of murder. She wasn’t indicted at that time. But no matter how you spend it, the public perception could be that you’re paying for special access or you’re trying to curry favor.”

The problem wasn’t that ABC made the payment but that Anthony was indicted, news analyst Tyndall said. “I don’t think ordinary people get worried about the ethics inside the journalism profession,” he said. “What they do get worried about is the idea of money being paid to somebody accused of committing a terrible crime.”

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_tv_tvblog/2010/03/casey-anthony-abc-news-gets-drubbing-for-200000-payment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+entertainment%2Ftv%2Ftvguy+%28TV+Guy%29

SPJ, Bernie Goldberg Slam ABC for 'Checkbook Journalism'

By Chris Ariens on Mar 24, 2010 03:21 PM

The Society of Professional Journalists' ethics committee has once again condemned the growing trend of "checkbook journalism" at the broadcast networks.

As we reported last week, during a pretrial hearing in the Casey Anthony case, it was revealed that ABC News paid Anthony's family $200,000, which went to her legal defense.

ABC News has furthered explained their position in the matter, telling the SPJ, "We should have disclosed it to our audience." The network has also made it a policy to disclose payments such as this as part of its reporting.

The issue came up on "The O'Reilly Factor" the other night as O'Reilly talked with Bernard Goldberg. (About 4 minutes in to the clip below:)



http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/abc/spj_bernie_goldberg_slam_abc_for_checkbook_journalism_156128.asp

On CNN Live this morning there was a panel discussing the Anthony payout. Even though ABC admitted they were wrong but by following that statement with this "The network has also made it a policy to disclose payments such as this as part of its reporting" only further discredited ABC for their actions.