During the time spent on this course, I feel that I have learned a lot of valuable lessons in terms of news media ethics. I think the biggest thing that I learned from this course was how important it is to get information out to the public as accurate as possible. Being first is nice, but you can hurt your credibility permanently if you don’t report truthful information. Another lesson I learned from this class was how many potential issues can arise from photojournalism and the questions you have to ask yourself about publishing a photo to a news outlet. You have to be really careful about what to publish and how to frame those pictures in order to not have a photo that comes across as bad taste.
The case study I learned that impressed me the most was the story of Stephen Glass. Obviously what he did was extremely wrong, but the fact that he was able to go as far as he did with fabricating stories was fascinating about his creativity. It also provided a great example of the consequences of not being truthful about sources and making up stories. Doing stuff like that can ruin a person’s career, and that baggage will never go away.
I feel like this course will have a significant impact in my future endeavors. There are a lot of decisions that I will come across in the journalism field I want to work, and I feel that I have a very solid foundation of ethical beliefs that can steer me in the right direction with any issue that arises. Dr. Z. did a phenomenal job of showing plenty of examples of real life ethical dilemmas that we can all see in the future. Not only can I apply this to my career, but I can also use the values learned in this class to everyday life situations.
At first, I was skeptical about how much I would truly learn in this course. I felt like a lot of stuff involving ethical issues can be solved with simple common sense. After the semester with Dr. Z. I learned that there is a lot more to ethics in news media than meets the eye. Dr. Z did a great job of showing a plethora of case studies that anyone of us can see in the future. Having the ability to talk about it in class discussions and the use of the clicker, I really felt it was nice to be able to hear both sides of an argument to any given situation. I really feel like I can take away a lot of core fundamental beliefs that I can apply to any situation thanks to what I learned in this course.