Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation." This means he or she coordinates discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."
Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focused on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.
Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.
During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.
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Even just a word or two can make it seem like a person is guilty before they've been tried. And "murder" has a specific meaning.
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It's reminder time: Today is as important as any when it comes to protecting NPR's reputation as a trusted news source. All of us need to take great care on social media.
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There's a question that's always good to ask in these cases. If you were that person, would you feel you'd been given a fair chance to either respond or decline to comment? The answer should be "yes."
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We should get every name right, and we shouldn't get one wrong more than once – especially a name that is one trusted click away from being checked.
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What Christine Blasey Ford alleges Brett Kavanaugh did would be a sexual assault, not an attempt at one.
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"Before I let you go" has become one of our favorite ways to end an interview. How about mixing in other ways of asking one last question?
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Remember: "Show, don't tell" is always good advice. Describe what people are doing and report what they're saying. After you've established those facts, carefully considered labels may fit.
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"Politically loaded language not only violates our commitment to be fair, but also gets in the way of telling good stories. "
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A fascinating true-crime case and the shame of being well-rested: two of the stories recommended by NPR staff, using the #NPRreads hashtag.
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Fans and foes want the news media to label the armed individuals who are occupying part of a national wildlife refuge. NPR is trying to describe, rather than characterize. Here's our thinking.