At first, I had no real motivation to attend Comm 409 at 8 a.m. twice a week all semester. So, I was grateful when professor Zhong pushed back the start time of the class. I was interested to learn about ethics in writing and professional journalism issues. In English 202A the semester before I wrote a paper on ethics in journalism so it was a good Segway for me to take this class. Two ethical issues that stood out to me this class were fabrication of stories and the ethical decision making.
The very first class we watched a news story about a little girl who had to visit her father in prison. It was at that moment when I realized some of the ethical decisions journalist must make to run their stories. I had no clue how to answer when professor Z asked the class if they would run the story. I came to another realization about journalist. Journalist must accept the fact that they may receive a lot of scrutiny when introducing a story that may contain an ethical dilemma. The story received a lot of talk due to the fact, the story included an interview with a very little girl. The girl Is so young its assumed that her mother made the decision for her. The world know has knowledge of that little girl’s dad being in jail. The girl may not have wanted the world to know that but her mother made that decision for her.
In class, we watched the movie “Shattered Glass” which focused on the journalistic career of Stephen Glass. He worked for a newspaper called The New Republic, and during his time at The New Republic, Glass fabricated dozens of stories. The ethical dilemmas in “Shattered Glass” present learning opportunities both for the journalistic industry and future journalism students.
Glass faked dozens of stories. Glass created quotes and fake names to fit profiles within his stories. Glass created fake events and fake locations, when his editor requested sources Glass would duck the question and make an excuse. He even started creating fake websites and fake phone numbers to link to his stories. Glass was eventually caught and admitted to all his fabrications within stories. Glass exposed a big problem in journalism and if it wasn’t for Glass this unethical practice may still be gotten away with in today’s news stories.
One case study that I enjoyed learning about was the falling man photo taken on September 11th -2001. Richard Drew a photographer for the AP snapped a picture of a man free-falling to his death after deciding to jump out of the burning north tower. The photo is a very sad picture to look at however it was obvious that the photographer had no way of helping this man. The photo symbolizes a lot about that horrible day in NYC. Some people did not like the fact that the photo was put in the newspaper. Some argued that he photo was to graphic and could really hurt the family of that man. The photo was deemed safe to run by the editor due to the distance the photo was taken from and there was no clear way that the man could have been identified from that photo.
I think that I’ve learned a lot about ethics in journalism. As a Broadcast Journalism major and with aspirations of becoming a sports broadcaster, at times I am going to have to make ethical decisions and looking back on Comm 409 I may remember the right thing to do.