Two important ethical lessons that I have learned from the lectures and the case studies are that fabricating will always have a negative consequence and that changing photos is as equally unethical as changing a quote or a statement. Although fabricating was such a large topic of Comm409, I did not realize how prevalent it was until we went over all of the different cases in class. The case that shocked me the most was the Stephen Glass case.
As much as Glass’s case shocked me, I learned the most from it. Watching the movie before learning about it gave me an entirely different perspective because I didn’t know what the movie was about when we first started watching it. As it went on, I was able to see who Glass was as person and as a writer. His writing got national attention but it was not authentic. So many things that he wrote were fabricated. When he was confronted about it and continued to lie, it showed who he was as a person. I was able to learn so much because it put everything that we were learning about into a real-life situation and I was able to see the repercussions.
The impact that I envision this course will have on my career is a very big one. I can see myself looking back on this course constantly and remembering all of the cases that we studied and how greatly they affected each of the lives and careers of the people involved in them. Careers have been completely destroyed, and ended, because of unethical decisions.
I think that this course will have the same impact on my life because I will constantly be thinking of how my actions and words can affect so many things that I will do. Fabricating, or changing anything in the slightest, in the real world could potentially ruin my reputation with other people and they will not find me to be credible. In the world of reporting and journalism, reputation seems to be one of the biggest things because a lot of it is based on trust. Saying things, even when they are not in my work, is still important because it could reflect negatively.
This course as a whole has taught me so much. The way that we looked at each case and its uniqueness has shown me so many different sides of the media that I didn’t know about. Each case was different, therefore, I was able to see different ways that the media can manipulate us as viewers and what I can do, as the future, to change that. The slides in class were an extension of each lecture and they helped to expand my knowledge.