Comm 409 has been an important exploration of professional ethics for me; not because I feel that I was unaware of ethical basics before, but because I had no idea that they can be so tricky to apply in common reporting situations. I feel like I have a fairly strong sense of right or wrong, a finely tuned moral compass if you will, so going into this class I didn’t fully understand the need for an entire 3 credit class on ethics. I understood that the requirement likely came about as a result of recent history so I passed the class off as a formality that needed to be completed only for the purpose of graduation. It wasn’t until I stepped into the classroom that I even realized that Comm 409 wasn’t a general ethics class, it was a news reporting ethics class.
It wasn’t long before I realized that I was actually wholly ignorant to news reporting ethical practices. In practice the reporting standards still point back to the basic ethical guidelines such as the golden mean. On a case by case basis, however, the application of ethics in reporting is still ultimately very judgment-based. Comm 409 opened my eyes to the fact that it’s not uncommon for reporters to have to make decisions that can impact the health and safety of other people; sometimes lives hang in the balance of a reporter’s decision. Understanding how to apply decision making models can only help you up to a certain point, when a reporter is actually in the moment and the role choice needs to be made it can be a weighty decision.
I found the examples of the reporter’s role in situations of perilous danger to be most compelling. The idea of ever fading into the background and snapping photos of someone in their darkest hour originally seemed ridiculous to me. I felt that in certain situations reporting just needs to take a back seat, that it should be the least of anyone’s concerns when a person is trapped in a burning vehicle. After Comm 409 I realize that as a reporter you’re simply not always cut out to help. To me the rule of thumb that calls for a reporter to only help in such a situation when he feels that he is the best possible person to help with an issue is smart. If a reporter just goes diving in to try and rescue people in any situation, they may get in over their head and just harm themselves, or even make the situation worse for the victim. There’s also the possibility of interfering with first responders. In these types of situations where the reporter is of no value to the situation from a safety and rescue standpoint, documenting the event is the next best function.
As I don’t plan to work as a reporter or news editor, and simply took the class to satisfy the ethics requirement, I wasn’t as compelled by the ethical details of things such as falsifying information in order to fabricate news. I understand the obvious importance of mitigating this threat to truth in reporting, but it felt more common sense and simply a cautionary explanation of just how bad the effect can be on a reporter’s career if they are caught fabricating a story. I felt that the story of Stephen Glass was entertaining, and the movie was well acted, but I didn’t pull too much from that section since I don’t plan on a career where the information would be too important to me (though you never know).
I also found the subject of my own research project, the ethical effects of naming a victim, to be informative and interesting. I prior had absolutely no idea on the legality of naming a victim of certain crimes in reporting, and virtually no ethical understanding of whether or not it’s acceptable morally to name victims when reporting certain crimes. I was loosely aware of the circumstances of Amanda Berry’s abduction case, mostly due to the viral videos that came out because of it, but I had never even considered the morality of naming her and the other victims of the horrible kidnapping.
All in all I was pleasantly surprised by the course. Comm 409 was interesting enough that I was only slightly dreading my alarm in the morning, and I’m glad that I chose to take it for my ethics course.