So, the thing about this NY Post story (which I’m not linking to, but you can find it over on their page if you really want to see it) is that after reading it multiple times, I can’t for the life of me come up with a single plausible reason for that to be mews at all.

news*, I mean, obviously

There’s no way to reasonably argue that she’s somehow a public figure. She’s not an elected official, she’s not a celebrity, etc.

And there’s no reasonable way to conclude that it’s somehow in the public interest for her story to be shared.

No, I don’t expect better from NYP, but I do think it’s still worth pointing out gigantic ethical failures like this.

I’ve always found @spj_tweets’ code of ethics a good general resource on these sorts of things. (It’s not some binding code or anything like that, just kind of a decent “Is this a bad idea?” check)

This article is a total failure on this point:
https://blogs.spjnetwork.org/ethicscode/?p=166

I think there’s an aspect of our very online world that’s led to a distorted view of what counts as newsworthy, what constitutes a public figure, and so on.

https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp 

There is a way the Post could have ethically covered this had they felt the absolute need to write *something.*

One option would have been to offer her anonymity, making the story about healthcare workers struggling to make ends meet.

But I think it’s pretty clear that the goal of the piece was just to shame her, not to explore a deeper issue.

The Post called her job. The Post apparently called her mom, too. That’s just beyond messed up. Unnecessary. Unethical.

This was what really struck me about the piece: the authors were willing to grant anonymity to someone to criticize her, but not to her https://twitter.com/erinbiba/status/1338463668007292934

She’s apparently very worried about losing her job. Someone set up a GoFundMe for her to help out (especially if she does lose the job). She wrote an update explaining what happened.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-lauren-fight-for-her-livelihood