1) Two important ethical lessons I learned in Comm 409 were the importance of not crossing the invasion of privacy line and why fabrication in journalism is considered “unforgivable”. Previously, I had assumed that I could only cross the invasion of privacy line if I intruded on someone’s private property or belongings, but in class we discussed how ethical decision making should consider different actions as violations of privacy. The specific actions we discussed were intrusion, publishing irrelevant and embarrassing facts, creating a false light, and appropriation. Even though a person being in public does not forgoes their legal privacy from the press, it is still possible to violate their privacy if they are not being newsworthy. In addition, fabrication betrays a journalist’s duty to inform the public. Stephen Glass, Patricia Smith, and Jayson Blair all fabricated news and paid with their careers as journalists. Readers need to be able to trust the people writing their news, which is also why Brian Williams is receiving criticism.
2) One of the case studies that I learned a lot from was the case of Nancy Phillips, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who became very close to her source, and he then confessed murder to her. I will remember this case because it involved a lot of different ethical issues from this class. One example is the ethics of a reporter and a source having a relationship beyond just reporter and source. Phillips developed a personal relationship with Len Jenoff, strong enough that Jenoff believed he could confess murder to her without her reporting it. Phillips then had to deal with the ethical dilemma of possibly becoming involved in her story by reporting Jenoff to the proper authorities or arranging for Jenoff to confess himself, which she chose to do. The Phillips case is an example of how it can be tempting to try to get close to a source, but the reporter must make it clear to the source that he or she is there to report and not become familiar.
3) Although I do not plan on becoming a journalist, ethical decision making will always important to me. I want to eventually work in television programming on the network side, and this will mean forming many relationships, making judgments on content for the network, and keeping certain information confidential while publicly releasing other information. In all of these jobs, I will need to make ethical decisions about what kind of relationships to form with people, many that mirror the questions a journalist faces such as whether or not to accept freebies or whether or not to make a promise. The difference will be that my decisions will not likely influence the general public or my reputation with the general public, but instead with coworkers, my bosses, and other people in my industry.
4) I enjoyed this course. My favorite part of it was hearing about all of the different real life cases of journalists having to make ethical decisions or getting in trouble for making unethical decisions. Taking this class helped me see what kind of news I can trust and helped me trust reporters more knowing that most are highly concerned with being ethical. It helped to know that there are exceptions.