After finished the entire semester, I have learnt a lot of useful principles. I have a better understanding of when and how to use them as well. Now I realized that journalism ethical problems are not that simple. A good journalist should do a comprehensive consideration when facing a ethical dilemma.
What I consider the most important might be the lesson about web journalism. I believe that multi-media communication is the future for all types of journalists. How to use the internet efficiently and creatively is crucial to journalists’ career. Also, a better understanding of journalists to the web media will bring much more value to the readers, since now people spend more time on the internet rather than using the traditional media, such as TV and newspaper.
In the lesson of web journalism, it mentioned that the internet is a good way to have follow-up report to some important events, which the traditional newspaper might considered “old”. Given those these detailed information to the public can give them a better understanding of the entire story, the cause of the accident and also its influences afterward. In the class, we used the bridge-break accident as an example. I believe whenever there is something huge happened, the readers are not only wants to what happened at the accident, but also how people deal with it later. Last week, there was an earth quick in Sichuan, China. There are a large number of people from all over the world care how’s the rescuing and rebuilding activity go in the city. The web media is definitely a crucial source for people who want to find out the information. On Weibo, a Chinese microblogging website, millions of people follow the news and shared their concerns on it.
I remember a TED speech that I watched on the internet before. It’s given by James Surowiecki, a finance writer at the New Yorker. He mentioned the tsunami took place in Wellawatte, Colombo in 2004. When the tsunami first happened none of the big news agency had people down to the scene to cover what was really going on there. The biggest news sources for people get information were actually the private bloggers and some local website. Those local people in Wellawatte shoot videos in their phone and upload them to the internet to let the world know what happened there. For those sources, you cannot say they are as credible as the information that were been reported on the newspaper. However, they were fast and powerful.
Another impressive lesson to me is the principles to follow when journalist need to be consider as a observer or participant. Usually, journalists should stay out of the accident. The function of journalist’s obligation is providing the information. However, under certain circumstances, when the reporter is the best and the only person to offer help, he/she should give a hand to the people who need to get out of the danger.
Generally speaking, after finishing the class, I will be more aware on the duty that journalist should do. I believe that in order to provide credible and useful information, journalist should first be a credible and fair-minded person.
Overall, I like the course a lot. I think it’s useful and I do feel that the instructor cares the students. My suggestion to the course is that maybe instead of signing the group project topics; student can choose a related topic they like, which may give them more motivation to accomplish it. Also, maybe cover some international journalism ethical issues.