Over the course of the semester, we’ve about the ethical issues faced in journalism. Two ethical issues that I found interesting and important were conflicts of interest and naming the victim.
Conflict of interest is an important ethical issue in journalism because it’s about the journalist’s motive to set their own opinions and prejudices aside to discover and report the truth about what they’re covering. Going to Wesley Lowery’s lecture made me want to learn more about examples of journalists facing conflicts of interest. For instance, he spoke about the difficulties of reporting during black lives matter protests because he had to report on a case as well as being an activist to fight against it. From his interview, I’ve learned that avoiding conflicts of interest may be difficult since it’s hard for journalists not to stand up for everything they believe in and for them to not have an opinion. Naming the victim was also an interesting issue to learn about because although it’s a journalist’s goal to write a compelling story that will draw the attention of their audience, you have to take into consideration whether naming could offend said person. When Lisa Falkenberg spoke at her lecture, she mentioned how she wrote personal columns involving sexual abuse cases. I found it interesting that instead of naming the victim, she included court hearings and recorded interviews so people will know the truth.
One case that impressed me the most was the Elizabeth Smart case. When learning about the case of Elizabeth Smart, I’ve learned that you need to take a lot of things into consideration before mentioning the victim’s name. For instance, making sure basic facts about the victim are true and also naming the victim before they or their family gives permission to the media. However, Smart’s case was unique because she went from being known as a missing person, to a person who was sexually assaulted after being found. So, it was interesting how you had to take into consideration whether we should still use her name in the media after hearing she was sexually assaulted while being kidnapped.
As a Public Relations major, I know that there will be times when I have to write feature stories and press releases. Ethics class has helped me learn a lot about how one ethical issue can not only impact your story, but it could impact your career and the company in which you’re working. Overall, this course will help me in the future, as it made me see how there are a lot more to a journalist’s job than to just report. As a journalist, I need to take many things into consideration before reporting a story, such as my surroundings, the people who I’m reporting, and the situation in which I’m reporting. I found this course interesting as we learned about a variety of cases, especially the ones pertaining to race and sexual abuse. The main thing that I appreciated about this course is that not only did we talk about ethical issues in journalism, but we were also updated on today’s issues.