Bill Marimow’s Stories with Ethics
According to Professor John Beale, a communications professor at Penn State University, “Bill Marimow’s Owedia lecture was the first at Penn State to actually talk about ethics and trials of it.” On February 26, 2013 the HUB- Roberson Auditorium at Penn State was filled wall to wall with students with some sitting on the floor, Marimow was introduced as one of the most respective writers in America and all attention was on him. Marimow is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer he touch on several issues in his lecture including two that really stood out. One is naming a victim and their experience with crime and the other being balancing your ethical desire.
When it came to ethics Marimow had several stories of what he encountered over the years from working in the field and told a story every chance he could when a different ethical issue was brought up until he had to stop. Naming the victim was one crucial point where he had several stories. One was the Amber Alert story where a girl was kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Marimow talked about how it was unethical for the journalist to release the child’s name for the second time not for kidnap but for sexual assault. This brought unwanted attention to the child who was only five at the time and the parents. Marimow said, “I ran the story, but only because her name was already plaster all over the news from the Amber Alert but I did not run a picture of her.” With naming the victim being a day to day challenge for journalist around the nation news media are not sure how to handle the options before them. (Black, 97)
Another issue that was brought up in the discussion was balancing your ethical desire. Throughout the entire lecture Marimow would stop to talk about the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do all the way down to the Question and Answer section of the lecture. One thing I admired about him was how he thought of these things and still had the mind of a human being with emotions. “At my paper we print what we know and what we don’t know so that we are open and honest with our readers,” said Marimow. I could relate to him because at that point I was wondering when you draw the line of professionalism. Instead of leading readers on and move away from fabrication and plagiarism you should tell them everything that you know and don’t so you can balance things. In journalism it seems to be about reputation and you never want to have a bad reputation with your readers. Though motivations for being ethical can be categorized it depends on the situation the journalist is in, the people involved, and the nature of the case. (Steele, 3) That was a good lesson to learn.
Even though I rushed to get to the lecture, the room was packed wall to wall, and the microphone kept giving feedback I feel like it was worth it. Outside of reading the text and receiving lectures in class it was good to receive another prospective of the challenges faced in ethics. Marimow’s lecture was truly informing.
1. Black, J. (1995, Summer1995). Rethinking the naming of sex crime victims. Newspaper Research Journal. pp. 96-112.
2. Steele, R. M. (1987). Video Ethics: The Dilemma of Value Balancing. Journal Of Mass Media Ethics, 2(2), 7-17.