Slides for visit to Global Health Storytelling Spring 2019, Profs. Donohue and Beard, Boston University

1. REPORTS AND STORIES;
CHOICES AND TOOLS
• Bill Mitchell
• Global Health Storytelling at BU
• 28 Feb 2019
• bmitch (at) gmail.com
• 727-641-9407

2. KEY CHOICES:
• Should I write a report?
• Circumstances that lend themselves to a report?
• A story?
• Circumstances that lend themselves to a story?
• Mostly one but some of the other?
• What about these circumstances favor one
approach more than the other but require both?

3. KEY TOOLS FOR REPORTS:
• Purpose
• Why is this a report, and what are its goals? Audience?
• Media
• Which platforms are best suited to which goals?
• Structure
• What structure – in the writing, in the multimedia
presentation – best serves your goals?
• Ethics
• What are the key ethical tensions at stake and how can
can you resolve them most credibly?

4. KEY TOOLS FOR STORIES:
• Purpose
• Why is this a story and what are its goals? Audience?
• Media
• Which platforms are best suited to which goals?
• Structure
• What structure – in the writing, in the multimedia presentation –
best serves your goals?
• Which characters will face what conflicts with what sorts of
resolutions?
• Ethics
• What are the key ethical tensions at stake and how can you
resolve them most credibly?

5. Guidelines for Written Narrative
The written narrative you will be writing to accompany your audio story serves
several purposes (from Profs. Donohue & Beard for Spring 2019 BU course).
• Should complement your audio mix.
• Should stand alone.
• Should convey additional information.
Other Details:
• Approximately 700 words
• Embed links to other useful resources.
• Don’t get carried away with numbers, too much arcane detail, or jargon.
Stay true to the story you are trying to tell.
• You may end up with a similar structure to that on your tape, but you may
need to adapt to make the story flow better on paper (without the sound
pushing it along). In particular, you may need to rethink your lead.
• Have at least one other person read your narrative before you submit it.

6. CASE STUDY #1
• The circumstances:
• Several months after the end of the first Gulf War
(1991), I was among a relatively few western
journalists granted a visa to report in Iraq.
• How should I spend my time?

7. MAIN STORY

8. Story available at
bit.ly/iraqreport

9. HOSPITAL STORY

10. CASE STUDY #2
• The circumstances:
• Ten years after Solidarity has begun disrupting the Soviet domination of Eastern
Europe, the Berlin Wall has come down and democracy has replaced Communism
across the region. (I covered the region from 1980-1983 as a foreign correspondent.)
• I persuade my editors to let me go back to cover a presidential election in Poland,
but I tell them the story I really want to write is my search for a hat.

14. EXAMPLES FROM BU NEWS SERVICE
• http://bunewsservice.com/food-insecurity-at-boston-university/
• http://bunewsservice.com/whats-next-for-trans-rights-in-massachusetts/
• http://bunewsservice.com/urban-green-spaces-boston/
• http://bunewsservice.com/people-with-disabilities-use-lived-expertise-to-make-public-
spaces-better/
• http://bunewsservice.com/rising-tides-in-fort-point/

15. Greg Kantor Web Narrative Copy
Millions of smokers have successfully used e-cigarettes to quit and now the science may back up their
efforts.
Last month, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that e-cigarettes, when
compared to nicotine-replacement options like patches and gum, were nearly twice as effective in
helping participants quit traditional cigarettes. Those who used e-cigarettes also had less severe urges
to smoke and received higher approval ratings than the standard nicotinere placement treatments.
Dr. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control researcher and professor at Boston University, strongly believes in
the potential benefits of e-cigarettes. This stance pits him against colleagues. Generally speaking, public
health experts in the United States remain uneasy about e-cigarettes as the future of quitting smoking
efforts.
“I think that in the tobacco control movement, there is a general feeling that anything that looks like
smoking must be bad, anything that has to do with the tobacco industry must be bad,” says Siegel. “But
the tobacco companies actually were not involved at all, these were independent companies and in
fact, their value proposition was to get as many people as they can switch to their products.”
However, e-cigarettes are not entirely harmless. The products contain nicotine, but because ecigarettes
heat vapor instead of burning it, the user absorbs nicotine much more slowly. This reduces the overall
addiction potential. That, combined with the absence of tar and chemicals present in traditional
cigarettes, means e-cigarettes are generally regarded as less harmful.

16. The Relentless Cycle: Homelessness and Substance Use in Massachusetts
Pallavi Puri
“He was shaking freezing, and we were trying to get him hand warmers to warm up, and I had to help
him take off his gloves because he literally was like missing majority of his fingers from frostbite”, said
Allison McBride, volunteer at AHOPE- a needle exchange and harm reduction site, while talking about
one of her homeless clients who was also a substance user.
According to the report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, currently,
Massachusetts has 20,068 homeless population. This number is a result of an increase in the homeless
population by 2,500 people in 2018; which marks the largest increase of 14% among all states. Claire
Schmidt, Coordinator at AHOPE-Boston Public Health Commission, says that “The folks that we serve
based on where we are, largely tend to be homeless, probably like 85 to 90% of our people are homeless
and have co-occurring substance use, mental health, physical health and homelessness- all at the same
time.”
Boston Medical Centre’s study saw that 275,000 Massachusetts residents, older than age 11, suffered
from opioid use disorder in 2015, that is 30% higher than the national average. However, it is unknown
that out of these people, how many were homeless. It is essential to know that because studies in other
developed countries show a complete association between the two. A study conducted in Melbourne
found out that 43% of the homeless population has substance use issue, of which 66% developed
problematic substance use after they became homeless. The study confirms that substance use is
common among the homeless population, however, for many of them, substance use follows
homelessness as it is an adaptive response to a situation which is stressful and hard to cope with.

17. Audio Story Narrative
Nicole Jeter
In the United States, 7.7 million children diagnosed with a mental health disorder are not receiving
treatment from counselors or mental health professionals.
A recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association reports, 49.7% of children did not
receive treatment. Some states such as Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah had the highest
amount of children not receiving treatment. Mental health conditions can be consequential when they
go untreated.
Emma Seslowsky, a singer song writer in New York City speaks about mental health stigma,
inaccessibility of mental health services and the isolation she has faced as an individual with a mental
health condition.
She speaks about the limited role her parents had in her obtaining access to a mental health
professional.
“I feel like I’m the one who talked about mental illness around the house. I feel like it wasn’t like they
were unsupportive but we didn’t really talk about therapy.”
Seslowsky believes that mental health ends up going untreated because individuals do not recognize
the gravity of the condition.
“Oh she’s a worrier or oh she’s just blue or sad. Instead of calling it what it is. Maybe parents don’t
want to acknowledge it in their own children because they feel like it is a fault of their own.”

18. ETHICS AS A TOOL?
• Ethics is NOT just about common sense
• Public health ethics and journalism ethics are sometimes in
tension – how might you resolve that tension?
• Journalism ethics is all about Green Light Ethics as
opposed to Red Light Ethics
• Finding a “third option” is often critical to a good ethical
decision
• Don’t kid yourself: As a journalist you WILL do some harm.

19. JOURNALISM ETHICS
• An approach to decision-making that:
• identifies ethical tensions
• clarifies stakeholders
• assesses likely benefit and harm
• Surfaces multiple options
• Facilitates a defensible decision on deadline

20. ETHICAL GUIDING PRINCIPLES
(USED BY SOME JOURNALISTS)
• Seeking and telling as much of the truth as possible
• Acting as independently as possible
• Minimizing as much harm as possible
• Reporting with as much transparency as possible, with
a goal of holding yourselves accountable to audiences

21. ETHICAL GUIDING PRINCIPLES
FOR GLOBAL PUBLIC HEALTH
RESEARCH
• Assess the social value for communities from which
participants are drawn
• Determine who will benefit from this research
• Determine if subgroups of the population are treated fairly
• Assure that the rights & well-being of individual research
participants are protected
• Source for above: World Health Org @ bit.ly/ethicswho

22. ETHICAL STANDARDS ENFORCED BY
INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARDS ON
PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH
• Scientific design and conduct of the study
• Risks and potential benefits
• Selection of study population and recruitment of research
participants
• Inducements, financial benefits, and financial costs
• Protection of research participants’ privacy and confidentiality
• Informed consent process
• Community considerations
• Source for above: W.H.O. p 12, bit.ly/humansubjectresearch.

23. FOUR THEORIES OF ETHICS
• Rule-based (Immanuel Kant, 18th century German)
• Deontology (deon=duty)
• Ends-based (Benthem, Mill, 17th, 18th century British)
• Teleology (teleo=ends)
• Golden Rule (various world religions)
• Do unto others…
• Golden Mean (Aristotle, 384-322, BCE)
• Golden Rule applied to multiple stakeholders

24. SOURCES FOR THIS PRESENTATION
• Journalism ethics work by Poynter’s Bob Steele,
Kelly McBride, Al Tompkins, Roy Peter Clark and
others.
• See http://bit.ly/ethicsatpoynter and poynter.org.
• The Ethical Journalist, by Gene Foreman
• The New Ethics of Journalism, by Kelly McBride
and Tom Rosenstiel

25. WHY CARE ABOUT ETHICS?
• It’s the right thing to do
• Ethical clarity enhances the value of the product
you’re creating
• Working with an ethical framework in journalism
reduces stress, increases efficiency and lets you
sleep better

26. CATEGORIES OF ETHICAL CONCERNS
• Getting the truth out
• Holding powerful accountable
• Giving voice to the voiceless
• Getting people the news & information they
need to govern themselves in a democracy

27. CATEGORIES OF ETHICAL CONCERNS, CONT.
• Minimizing harm of various sorts
• Potential loss of job, status, even life
• Emotional damage caused by insensitive
language
• Harm that might occur as a result of NOT
publishing a story

28. CATEGORIES OF ETHICAL CONCERNS, CONT.
• Fake news, slanted news, hidden agendas
• Ideological argument masquerading as
independent news
• Anonymous sourcing limiting audience ability
to evaluate worth of information provided
• Withholding relevant info from audience

29. AN ETHICS PROCESS ON ANY GIVEN STORY
1. Agree on guiding principles
2. Get clear about your journalistic purpose of this story
3. Get clear about identity of stakeholders
4. Start with your gut but don’t stop there
5. Next consider rules, laws, codes
6. Then reflect on which of your principles are in tension
7. Come up with at least three alternatives
8. Explain your selection of one alternative, in writing, to
your colleagues and your audiences

30. POSSIBLE NEXT STEPS
1. Make the Huntington News constitution available online –
prominently!
2. Review constitution to see if you need more specific
ethics guidelines & process. Is your policy re unnamed
sources clear enough?
3. Add Corrections to your menu & run in regular print spot

31. RESOURCES
1. These slides: bit.ly/ethics28jan
2. Syllabus for Fall 2016 course: bit.ly/2016FallEthics
3. Website & slides for that course: bit.ly/mitchell2016
4. Ethics help: bmitch (at) gmail.com | 727-641-9407
5. Legal help: Rob Bertsche, Prince Lobel law firm:
rbertsche (at) princelobel.com
Rob’s work number: Contact Bill for this
Rob’s mobile & Rob’s home: Contact Bill for these