Blog 5 Kaidian Gordon
The two most important ethical lessons, I have learned in this course are never to fabricate stories and to stay true to yourself as a Journalist and your decisions.
From the lessons I have learned throughout this course about fabrication is that it only puts you and your career in a bad place. It is better to have stories that others may not like than to fabricate stories and have them be popular among your peers and the public. I feel that if you love what it takes to be a journalist. Doing all the work that comes along with it should not be difficult, but a lesson.
I also feel that as a journalist you should stand by your decisions. Standing by your decisions is important because not always in journalism you may find it easy to make a decision that will affect a lot of people. I think getting advised from your peers and editor will be helpful when making a decisions. This may help you to feel more secure about the decisions you made.
I think envision the course’s impact on my future career and life, as a journalist will definitely be the difficult decisions I might face. I have attended many lectures that speakers explained some of the decisions that they had to make at some point in their career. I feel that this course has prepared me to know what is RIGHT or WRONG to make good decisions in the future.
I enjoyed taking this course; I learned many different and new things about ethics in journalism. I think this class lies out a good understanding of what might be ethical or unethical in journalism. The examples that I learned from in class really give me a full understanding of it all.
For example Stephen Glass, fabrications of stories showed me it’s better to be a hard working journalist. That stays true to your job and audience than to create false stories and past them on as truth. From the lectures I have attend it shows that there are other ways be a great journalist that does not involve fabrications.
I think the class was a great learning experience. For improvement the class is already good the way it is. Future students should come prepare to write and participate. Also as long as they follow the clear instructions that Dr. Zhong gives they will do well in the class.