All the news that is fit to print? Reporting on a victim's character during a crisis

Abstract

Using the United Airlines “bumpgate” crisis as example, this research analyses how reporting of irrelevant information on a crisis victim's bad character impacts on empathy towards the victim, the victim's reputation as well as the reputation of the news medium that published the information. A one‐factorial experiment was conducted with two conditions manipulating the reporting on the crisis victim's character plus a control condition. Respondents were 245 online‐panel participants from the UK. The findings show that when journalists violate the code of ethics by reporting irrelevant negative information on the character of a crisis victim, they harm not only the reputation of the victim, but also that of their news organization. This study contributes to the scarce research on the impact of media reporting during a crisis on victims of the crisis and on the reputation of the newspaper. Journalists must be aware that violating the journalistic code of ethics by reporting on irrelevant negative characteristics of a victim is not only detrimental for the victim but can also significantly hurt the reputation of their organization.