The two important ethical lessons I have learned in this course are from the topic of making ethical decisions in photojournalism and the conflict of interests. While some other topics are more of the common sense and are encountered in many other professional field as well, I feel like these two are the most difficult ones in my life. I am not a journalism major so I probably would not have any chance in taking photos for reporting. However, the dilemma a photojournalist has to face before taking a photo can be difficult to me. Even though I would know it is my professional job in gathering information in the scene, my personal values do not allow me to ignore the victims and just take photos, even there are better persons around me who can offer aid. I just feel uncomfortable in doing it, which is probably one of the reasons why I did not put journalism into my consideration when choosing my major. However, if I really became a photojournalist, I probably would fulfill my professional responsibility in taking ethical photos after considering whether there is a conflict of interest, whether I am the only person who can offer help, whether the photo would help in creating news value, and whether the photo would help in storytelling, even if it contradicts my personal values a little, as it is my noble journalistic principle in providing the most genuine and informative news to audience.
While being irrelevant to news media reporting, I can relate similar situations to pedestrians around an incident. Many people nowadays simply take out their phones and take photos when accidents happen. The first thing they think of is not to call for help or report the case to police, but to take out their phone, record, and post on social media for likes. To me, such situation should have no difference with photojournalism decision making because the difference between them is whether we have the obligation of reporting it. I would expect some humane ethical values that pedestrians should not just be standing there and watching but to help because that should be journalists’ job to report the incident unless they are the only persons who can help out.
Another important lesson I learned is how to deal with personal interests. When being a professional job like journalists, we are somehow obliged to give up our personal interests. If I cannot ensure this, I am probably not suitable for being a journalist – is what I have concluded, which is why I appreciate reporters and other professionals. While I cannot easily give up my personal interest, I have learned to reduce the conflicts to make fairer judgments (even it does not relate to journalism) as I believe it is important in dealing with different affairs in daily workplace, not just limited to journalism. Limiting the appearance of conflict of interests would be helpful in succeeding in workplace as you may win over colleagues’ or subordinates’ respect if you never put your personal interest in front of other objective matters.
One case study that impressed me was the Asian lady being discriminated by her Airbnb host. The reporting does not have any problems because it simply reports what the lady experienced with Airbnb. It brought up another racial problem faced in the world. Not just the U.S., but many countries claim they welcome different races and push forward racial harmony. However, it is also true that these are just talks. I believe everyone has some sort of racial stereotyping deep in their heart, and this case brings out such fact to me again. We may accept someone with different race to be our friend, but our first impression on someone is somehow based on the hidden stereotyping within ourselves. I believe such prejudice cannot be eradicated so easily, but embracing more people with different colors in all sorts of environment – schools, workplaces, and newsrooms, will simply just make the world better as getting along with them for longer will change our perception on them, but without such effort, it is impossible to achieve racial diversity.
This course actually strengthens my ethical values more than changing mine. In the first few classes I was asked whether Steve Glass would stop fabricating if he had taken this course, and my answer was no. My answer now would still be a no because I still believe our ethical values are somehow rooted since early ages. However, if our ethical values are already “correct” in general sense, this course actually can strengthen our values a lot more, which is another reason that I think Glass would not change his value if he took this course in university as his ethical values in journalism may have gone “wrong” before that. If he took ethics class in younger ages, he might not have fabricated that much. I really appreciate that case studies from this class provide a lot of real life examples in dealing with different problems. While majority of them are about news reporting, they also bring me insights in dealing with other decisions.