This class ways very beneficial for me, and I feel like what I’ve learned in this class is going to help me become a better journalist.
One very important thing in my life is that when in doubt, double check, triple check, or even quadruple check. When reporting on something, it’s better to be way safe than sorry. We had many lectures where we put ourself in the situation, and we were told to go ahead and check it out it feel wrong about reporting, publishing, or saying something that we don’t feel confident in doing as a journalist. Another really important thing that I learned in this class is way more about plagiarism. There was a slide in a PowerPoint with a quote from a professor and that really stuck with me. Professor Cynthia Gorney said something really valuable that’ll stick with me: don’t steal, don’t like, or don’t make things up and pretend that they are reporting. When we went over this is class, it really stuck with me about how it’s much better to use attribution than to use plagiarism.
This course is going to hopefully help me become a better journalist now and down the road. I hope that the skills that Dr. Zhong has taught and implicated helps me be an ethically great journalist in the future and throughout my entire career. Being ethical doesn’t automatically make you an good journalism, as I’ve learned in this class. But there is a huge difference between being a good ethical journalist compared to a good unethical journalist. Being a journalist means that sometimes you have to make decisions that you’re not going to be happy with, or your boss isn’t going to be happy with, but at the end of the day being a good journalist means that you must be ethically correct and having standards and morals as most of the time you’re dealing with human beings. Put yourself in their shoes and see how’d you feel if you were violated, so don’t violate them.
This course overall is very important for anyone aspiring to be a journalist. This class puts you in real life situations and gives us the opportunity to freely discuss what we do if we were the journalist in that situation. The course structure overall is very easy to follow as well. Everything in the syllabus is clearly stated, and there are very clear instructions about what to do and when it’s due. Dr. Zhong is very helpful and is always willing to help you if you have any questions with anything.