2 Ethical Lessons I Learned
The Consequences of Plagiarism and Fabrication
Before this class, I knew that it was never a smart idea to plagiarize. However, by the end of this class, I realized that not only is plagiarism a horrible idea but it literally has the power to end your career if (when) you get caught. The documentary “Broken Glass” showed me that it doesn’t matter who you are or who you write for… If you are caught plagiarizing or fabricating, it will result in the immediate termination of your job. In the movie, Glass thought that he was being sly when making up his stories, which just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how careful you think you are being… the truth will always come out in the end. In this day and age especially, it is all too easy to be caught either creating fake information (fabricating) or stealing someone else information without giving credit (plagiarizing) so you might as well just play it safe and COMPLETELY avoid either of the two. I think that this lesson is the one that stuck out to me the most in this course.
Invasion of Privacy
The second most important ethical lesson that I learned in this course deals with invasion of privacy, and how invading someones privacy can affect a persons life in a hugely negative way. For my groups case study, we studied the case of Oliver Sipple; an army veteran whose sexual orientation was outed (without his permission) by the media after he saved President Ford’s life. As a result of the media publishing this information, Sipple’s family shunned him. One seemingly simple “mistake” from the media screwed up a mans personal life monumentally. Similar to this case, for my last blog I studied the case of Hulk Hogan v. Gawker. In this case, Hogan, a pro wrestler, was filmed having sex with someone without his knowledge, and then the clip was posted to celebrity gossip website Gawker.com. After it was posted, his reputation was put in jeapordy, as well as his professional career. In the end, Hogan sued for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and many other charges. He won the case (as well as millions of dollars in damages,) and the website that exposed him went bankrupt. This just goes to show that posting unauthorized information will never end well in any scenario.
We learned in class that a few ways to avoid getting ourselves into these sticky situations as journalists are to a) always be open with your sources, b) explicitly check with them that they are okay with you posting personal information and c) keep your promises; if you promise anonymity, you must keep it because overstepping boundaries may result in negative consequences.
Case Study That I Learned the Most From
The case study that I learned the most from was the study on Stephen Glass. As I touched on before, the documentary “Shattered Glass” chronicled the life of Steven Glass; a man who wrote for the New Republic and was ultimately caught plagiarizing and fabricating multiple stories that had been published for them.
In the follow up interview that we watched in class after the movie, Glass admitted that the fabrication started off years ago with just one small tweak of a quote. As his career went on, he started making up not only quotes, but entire stories as well. This goes to show that plagiarism is never okay, even if its the slightest change. As we saw in this case, even the slightest tweak can result in you becoming too comfortable with making up information and digging yourself an extremely deep hole until you ultimately are caught.
This case study showed me how severely plagiarism can effect the life of a journalist; seeing raw interviews from Glass really put into perspective the serious consequences that can occur as a result of making up information.
Conclusion
Before taking Comm409, I wasn’t sure how much new information that I would learn since I already had taken comm168, comm271, comm260, comm403, etc. However, I am happy with all of the new information that I learned surrounding ethics and journalism. Overall, I really enjoyed the class and feel that I have a solid foundation of ethics when it comes to the field of journalism. I look forward to applying all the skills that I learned in my career field–digital and print journalism/reporting– after I graduate here at Penn State. Not only did I learn about ethics in this class, but I also got to improve my writing skills in the five blogs that we wrote, and improve my public speaking skills with the case study presentation.