This semester I have learned a lot about ethical issues. Things that are debatable in what is acceptable and things that are not. Honesty is one ethical issue that I found to not only be important, but is a requirement when it comes to journalism. Watching the movie Shattered Glass opened my eyes to realize that we trust the media to report what is honest and true. Stephen glass jeopardized the credibility of his paper, and tarnished his reputation forever. I came to understand that not all journalist that lie, lie just because they want to some do because they have tight deadlines to make or their work load is too much for them. Regardless of the situation, it is unacceptable to lie in your stories as a journalist.
The second ethical issue that I learned about and took interest in was the issue of conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is an interesting subject to me because what is the line between that and bias? There are many journalist that I find to be not subjective and bias, but would that qualify as a conflict of interest also?
This leads into the case study that learned the most about which was the case of Ethan Bronner vs. NY Times. Bronner was the Jerusalem Bureau chief. Bronner was Jewish and his wife was Israeli. Bronner’s son joined the Israeli defenses and this caused discussion of conflict of interest in his reporting. The chief editor thought that this was even more reason to make him the bureau chief there on top of the fact that he was a top notch reporter. In this situation I believe that some critics did not agree with his work and saw an opportunity to accuse him of conflict of interest.
This course was very informative on the issues that we will face later in our journey as journalist. I was learned about multiple ethical issues that I did not know of before. One in particular a was about releasing either the accuser’s, and accused name to the public or releasing both in a domestic case. We talked about many things in class that are considered touchy subjects, but the classroom was a safe space with a good environment to talk about these issues.
As a whole this course is a must if you are considering to go into any type of journalism. Learning what pieces to include in your story, what to exclude, and how to arrange your story.