“A Columnist’s Ethical Dilemmas”
Situation Definition:
One of the scariest things that Lisa Falkenberg has ever done is accept a job as a columnist. As part of the Foster-Foreman lecture series, Falkenberg spoke about how she never originally wanted to write columns. As she spent more time on the job, she realized that it allowed her to incorporate all of the things she loves about writing: investigative reporting, narrative writing, and education. As a columnist, Falkenberg had to establish herself as a journalist before she could do opinion pieces, and she had to do enough research to show that she knew what she was talking about in her columns. Even as a columnist, Falkenberg ran across ethical issues just like any other journalism might encounter on the job. One ethical issue that she encountered was naming the victim in a sensitive piece. The second ethical issue was writing columns about other people that also connected back to her.
Analysis:
One of Falkenberg’s most notorious stories was about two children in the foster care system. The children were taken away from their foster parents, and the story followed the process the parents went through to get the children back. Since the story focused on young children that were sexually abused, Falkenberg was ethically unable to name the children throughout the piece. The children were already going through a tough situation, and she didn’t want to put the kids at risk of making their situation even harder. Falkenberg feared that her story would lose credibility because she was not naming the children, but she cared more about making sure her story was ethical. In order to gain back credibility for her piece, Falkenberg used other facts to validate the story. The parents of the foster kids gave Falkenberg documented facts (i.e. emails) that showed that they reported specific things on specific dates, which gave her proof to back up her story. According to Amber Grand and Sara Stone, “[…] the second guideline is ‘minimize harm.’ Items under that dictum include ‘avoid pandering to lurid curiosity’ and ‘be cautious about identifying juvenile suspect or victims of sex crimes,’” (Grand and Stone, 2013, p. 36). Falkenberg was able to follow the rules of the SPJ by not reporting the names of the children involved in the story, while maintaining a complete and factual story that still got the message across to readers.
Part of the power of writing columns is being able to choose stories that interest you. Falkenberg decided that she wanted to write a story about her dad having cancer. Her father was very sick and was being denied by his health insurance the care that he deserved. She decided that in order to fight for her father, and other people who have been put in the same position as him, she would write a story about his situation. Falkenberg’s biggest fear was that the story would be unethical to write because the story’s impact would benefit her and her family. Falkenberg is not the only columnist to choose a topic for a story that has a close connection to their life. Dawn Turner Trice stated, “I am drawn to stories about people or issues that allow me to discover a new angle or see a soft spot in an argument I once thought I’d reasoned all the way through,” (Trice, 2014, p. 50). Falkenberg decided to write the article because she knew that millions of other people would be able to connect with the article because she found a soft spot in the heated debate of health care.
Conclusion:
Many of the topics covered by Lisa Falkenberg were extremely controversial, but she managed to write about these topics while maintain the ethical guidelines of journalism. I found it interesting to hear Falkenberg speak about the ethical issues that she runs across as a columnist. As we talk about different ethical dilemmas in class, I never realized that columnists have to follow the same ethical guidelines just like reporters do because both are forms of journalists. I was also interested to learn about how columnists are able to write opinion pieces as long as they are able to use facts to back up their piece, like how she used facts to write the story about her father. It is important to continue talking about these topics because although columnists are using their opinions and personal experiences to write their stories they are still able to stay objective, so they can meet their goal of serving the people.