This course taught me a lot more than I thought it ever would. Other courses teach you how to be a journalist and use equipment, but many courses don’t discuss the types of situations you will encounter on the job and how to deal with them. This course opened my eyes to the other side of journalism.
One of the most important ethical lessons I learned in this course is that in this field you must remember journalism’s principles no matter what. As a journalist, your first obligation is to tell the truth. A journalist’s first loyalty is also to citizens. As a journalist, you have to put your own political views aside and just report the news. Your job is to report the news to citizens, not to pick and choose what you want to tell them.
Another important ethical lesson I learned in this course is the importance of newsworthiness versus the invasion of privacy. There is a very fine line between reporting the news and invading someone’s privacy to investigate. I also learned the importance of knowing what is appropriate to report without offending anyone. Knowing when to report victim’s names and print pictures of crime scenes is what makes you a good reporter. It’s imperative to earn the trust and respect of the citizens who follow your work.
I know this course will help me in my future career for a variety of reasons. First of all, it brought issues to my attention that I never even though about. There are so many things you don’t think about when you watch the news, like all of the things that are behind the story. Aside from introducing to me a variety of situations I could encounter, this course taught me how to handle these situations. I learned the many outlets I can turn to when I need help making a decision and what should go into making a decision.
I found this course to be very successful, but there are still a few things I might change about it. I thought the course study group project was a good project to do, but I thought that it dragged on for a very long time. It didn’t seem fair that some projects had a couple more weeks to do their project than the others. Maybe have more than two groups present their projects in a class so they would be done faster. I also think that a different final project would be a good idea. I feel like our class would get more out of the assignment if it was some type of presentation with a writing assignment on the side. Being able to have interaction with our classmates and a group discussion would be more beneficial, in my opinion.