In this course I have learned many important ethical lessons, but the two that I think are most important are never lie to your readers and don’t break your sources trust. I learned the importance of not lying to my readers when we watched the movie on Stephen Glass. Glass was a very talented writer and reporter and he threw it all away at an attempt to better his stories. He broke not only his readers’ trust but his editor’s as well and he shamed the name of The New Republic newspaper. He was putting getting ahead in the business in front of his readers needs. In journalism your first duty is to your readers and to make them more knowledgeable about what is going on in the world. Glass did not fulfill his duties and he disappointed many in the process.
The other lesson of not breaking your source’s trust I learned from the case study involving journalist, Nancy Phillips, and murderer Len Jenoff. Phillips chose not to tell the police when Jenoff told her about murdering Carol Neulander because he asked for it to be off the record. Phillips told her editor because it was the newspaper’s policy and that was it. This gave Phillips what she needed to dig deeper into the story and eventually get Jenoff to confess to the police himself. Phillips did the right thing by not breaking her source’s trust because her duty it is to the public and not to the police. If reporters started telling the police everything they heard off the record there would be no more sources left to report on. I think this was the most impressive case that I learned of because Phillips was able to get a murderer to confess and was able to publish her report in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
This course has highly impacted my ethical standards and I think it will make me a better journalist for it in the future. Learning about other journalists mistakes and triumphs will keep me from making the same mistakes they made or help lead me in the right direction when it comes to decision making. I hope in the future when I am posed with difficult decisions I can remember the things I learned in this course and do the right thing. This course as a whole has had noting but a positive influence on me and I am sure it will benefit me in my future.