During this course of COMM409 I learned so many lesson of ethics in journalism. It’s a very informative class and I highly recommend it for students in journalism. Each lesson of the day broadened my knowledge on the challenges of different ethical thinking. Journalism is a very tricky business and attending this class will help me in the future. As journalist we tend to think we know everything or at least try to know everything, when nothing is actually what it seems. Things you may see as minuscule in your personal life could have much impact on your job situation. It is important to know the rules to the game before you play. Two important ethical lessons I learned was conflict of interest and invasion of privacy. It’s interesting to see how conflict of interest situations varies on occasion. I learned how to differentiate rule-based and end-based thinking when it comes to the invasion of privacy of witnesses or protesters. I understand that it has plenty to do with morals. A personals privacy is the right to be left alone, but when in the public nothing is safe.
I look forward to my career as a journalist and the impact this course has had on my research is great. I am able to tell the difference between real and fake news. I can also be aware of different types of ad’s that trick you. I learned different conflicts of interest beside personal and financial relationships. I enjoyed the morality and realness of each lesson, journalism is very personal.Knowing what I know now about my profession I see that it is not as easy as I thought prior to this course. There are a lot of mistakes you can make without even thinking your doing anything wrong.
The case study I learned the most from was “Penn State Demonstrators”. In this case 26 people were arrested for protesting a death treat. The names and addresses of those protesters were printed in the news paper article. The editor went with rule based thinking which is to publish the address of everyone arrested. On the other hand people on the outside thought is would be safer not to publish that personal information. When is bending the rule okay when considering privacy for the lives of other people?
My refection on this course as a whole is how informative it was to letting me know, that I know absolutely nothing. Which is the purpose of this new media class, but it teaches us the blueprint of moral integrity. This class made me think about how I would handle situations as a journalist or reporter on the scene. I honestly would take it again just to learn more material so I don’t have any slip ups when I get a real corporate job in a news station or for a magazine.