Media Hype
There are media ethic issue case studies that have occurred over time. For example, the coverage on the Ray Rice case. Ray was terminated and indefinitely suspended for aggressively assaulting his fiancé in an elevator. He punched his, now, wife in the face. When the video got out it went viral very fast on social media. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are just three of many social media sites that I saw the shocking video on (Alonso, M. (2014, September 10). Ray Rice: A Social Media Case Study.) Celebrities, religious leaders, news broadcasters, journalists, and the comments of many regular people at home played a huge role in this case and the social media outbreak. Many were outraged, some made jokes about the incident and others had questions about how the NFL Commissioner would handle the situation.
Ray Rice isn’t the first person to get into a domestic occurrence and he isn’t even the first professional athlete to either. Each day at least 3 women die because of domestic violence and there are 4 million domestic violence cases a year (Journalism Ethics. (2015, January 1). Ray Rice was the first professional athlete to almost lose his entire career over this. Why? Because of the role that social media played in this case.
Think about it, there is little to no doubt that Ray wouldn’t have lost his job if the tape had not gone viral. Ray told the NFL Commissioner during a sit-down with him, on June 16, that he hit his fiancé in the elevator. Rice did not lie to the commissioner during the June 16 meeting, making the upgraded indefinite suspension excessive and without cause.
Many journalists and news broadcasters have a tendency to self-inflate media coverage. This has caused many issues and is a violation to both media and journalist ethics. Some ethics violated in this case include: truth, giving special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy, avoiding stereotyping individuals and groups, and not manipulating images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects(Burkholder, C. (2009, January 1). The NFL did not tell the truth at the beginning of the case which was one reason why news broadcasters were viewed as the lying messengers in this case. They only knew what they were told. This isn’t a mostly a privacy issue because the incident occurred in a public place where there was video surveillance and eye witnesses. Nevertheless, he is a human being and there are millions of men daily, and yearly that get into the same situation. Ray rice, being singled out and targeted is a problem because the mass media only focused and exaggerated his case. Additionally, comedians and other individuals added different sounds, and manipulations to the video of the incident to mislead viewers. The NFL took a huge hit, and suffered a lot of negative energy for this case. By excluding things like exaggeration and distortion many would be able to focus on what really matters.
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/ray-rice-social-media-case-study
http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/5/23/5744964/ray-rice-arrest-assault-statement-apology-ravens
http://www.safehorizon.org/page/domestic-violence-statistics–facts-52.html
http://journalismethics.info/online_journalism_ethics/photojournalism.htm