The 2016 election cycle was the craziest in recent memory, and no one seems to have left it without a changed view on some aspect of American life. Whether their opinion on politicians, other countries, themselves, or the media changed, everyone has something to say about it. Through the unflattering stories of both Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, one in particular caught the attention, good and bad, of the country. BuzzFeed News ran an unsubstantiated story about Russian operatives having blackmail on Donald Trump. The details of this reported blackmail were crude, and not entirely relevant to this discussion. What is relevant to our discussion of ethics, however, is BuzzFeed’s decision making in publishing the story. One area of ethics our class has discussed that comes to my mind here is the need for being truthful- journalists must be sure what they are printing is accurate. Another is the issue of biased reporting. It’s no secret the media has been constantly searching for dirt on Trump, and possibly they let their personal feelings get in the way of being fair by publishing the story. I believe BuzzFeed’s choice to publish this report is the best case of ethical dilemmas facing journalists today.
Miriam Metzger, Professor of Communications at the University of California Santa Barbara, blames the credibility decrease of journalism on the internet. “In the past, substantial costs of information production and dissemination on a mass scale limited the number of sources to only those with enough authority and capital to justify and sell an information product,” (Metzger, 2007). With so many sites like BuzzFeed around the world, Metzger argues, the ability to publish information is unlimited, but there are drawbacks. While more people than ever can inform the public, lapses in judgment, such as BuzzFeed’s here, is more common. While the owner of BuzzFeed claimed he felt Americans had the right to know about the report, sites like The New York Times and CNN decided to hold back and specify the claims were unproven, (Ember and Grynbaum, 2017). We have talked about the need to be truthful and rock-solid in the accuracy of reporting. BuzzFeed may have thought it was in a public interest to publish the report, but the fallout of not verifying the report before exposing it has damaged their credibility and will continue to do so.
A second ethical issue I take with this case is the favoring of democratic candidates over republican candidates in the news media. Studies have repeatedly shown reporters to be more liberal than the general population, and research dates as far back as the 1930’s, where reporters were found to support Franklin Roosevelt, (Niven, 2003). By no means does Trump deserve better treatment from the press- he has done many things which require condemnation- but this situation highlights the contrast in coverage Americans saw in 2016. A search for Hilary Clinton on BuzzFeed returns a small amount of negative articles, most related to insults being aimed at her by her opponents. A search for Trump returns many negative articles, some making him look foolish and some making him look mean. While Trump may deserve these negative articles, it’s hard to believe Clinton doesn’t deserve more after everything that happened this past year. Perhaps a left-leaning bias has convinced news publishers that framing Trump in a different light than Clinton is the right thing to do, but it is not.
In the end, I believe journalism will have to climb out of the hole of unlimited information. It has many benefits, but the drawbacks are innumerable. With so much ability to publish, sites are losing a grip on what is a quality news story and what needs to be researched further. The constant polarization of our political climate- deemed conflict-extension- builds case upon case of bias without ever letting any of it go. I think journalism needs to take a hard look at itself to decide if it really is here to be unbiased, or if the members of the press are letting themselves get carried away in the political fervor of our modern age.
Works Cited
Metzger, M. (2007). Making Sense of Credibility on the Web: Models for Evaluating Online Information and Recommendations for Future Research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(13), 1-117.
Ember, S., & Grynbaum, M. (2017, January 10). BuzzFeed Posts Unverified Claims on Trump, Igniting a Debate. The New York Times, Media.
Niven, D. (2003). Objective Evidence on Media Bias: Newspaper Coverage of Congressional Party Switchers. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 80(2), 311-326.