Ethical Lessons
Two of the most important ethical lessons from the lectures both deal with the fact that many ethical decisions in this field are not black and white situations, but have various layers that will be judged in different ways.
First, the ethical issues of a conflict of interest go deeper than just keeping your own reporting bias-free; it also deals with keeping the perception of your coverage bias-free. This can be achieved by straying from events, like a march or a protest, in which your personal beliefs are revealed.
Invasion of privacy was also an important lesson, focusing on the importance of reporting the necessary facts on a subject, while also providing respect to your subjects. One of the individual case studies was about Oliver Sipple, a San Francisco man who stopped the assassination of President Gerald Ford by grabbing the gun woman’s arm. As he became part of the public eye following this, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that he was gay. Although the argument could be made that he was a public figure in the moment and had been relatively out in the San Francisco gay community, the report seemed to be an unnecessary part of the coverage and an invasion of a person’s privacy.
Case Study
The case study that impressed me most is the reporting violence study on the coverage of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. The coverage of this event in American history blended different aspects of journalism, including the visual side with live video and a plethora of powerful images, while dealing with the fast-paced (sometimes live) reporting that can lead to certain ethical issues because of the lack of time to think through a decision.
All-in-all, the coverage seemed laudable for its ability to produce crucial news items depicting the situation — like the scenes from around the event and one particular powerful image that was captured, “the falling man” — without creating a large-scale controversy due to a report or certain reporting behavior that would be deemed unethical, like many other cases with reporting violence have, such as the Ray Rice domestic abuse case.
Course’s Impact
The course will have its impact on my future career, whatever that may be, because ethics play an important role in any field, especially a communications-related field. As stated above, ethical situations are not always black and white, and with the examples we have viewed from the case studies, it is easy to see that these decisions can be difficult. However, the course kept situations like these intellectually stimulating, which should impact my future judgement on some items in my day-to-day and work life.
Reflection on Course
The course as a whole is an important piece of communications learning because of the reasons stated above, so I feel it is a necessary part of my time here. I also feel that the course, because of the case study-based learning style, was more interesting and helpful than it would have been otherwise in a more theory-based learning style because you get to see the examples, as well as where these examples went right and went wrong in various ethical decisions.