It’s hard to imagine we’ve been learning this course for almost the whole semester. After learning lots of cases going on in this class, I can say I have a better understanding of ethical problems in journalism. The class helps me to have a good habit now that I would always think about news I get to know whether they’re ethical or not. This class I think should be the basic principle of being a journalist. Also, I feel like something we talked about in class, can be a good guideline even in my daily life, for instance, now I know how to make a decision that I won’t regret after learning the decision making theory.
When I reflect the class, the two important ethical lessons are conflict of interest and keeping objective when doing undercover reporting. I was so interested in the lesson of conflict of interest since I didn’t think receiving small gifts from someone after covering is a big deal. John Beale talked about the same rule in my photo class, and then I realized we need to treat such behavior seriously. No matter how fair you would write in your reporting, avoiding anything of losing objective is really crucial. Also, if you cannot avoid conflicts, you must acknowledge to the public. That’s not something unnecessary but it’s a principle. Another point I want to mention is what I get from the case study of undercover reporting. There’re lots of ethical issues going on when doing undercover reporting, but even experiencing what you cannot accept or something out of your expectation, as journalists, telling the truth without bias is the first and the only choice. From the case of our group, I can know how depressed Janet Cooke was when she did undercover reporting, but I appreciate how fair she did when telling the story of how dark the market of young immigrant women in NY was.
The case I learned a lot from the class is the case I did for blog 4: “7 days of Frank Smith doing undercover reporting at a mental hospital”. I cannot how brave Smith was to think about covering a real mental hospital as pretending a patient. He should know how dangerous it was and how horrible his experience would be, but he was still willing to do that and telling the 100% truth after coming back from the hospital. He was a model of being a good journalist with the high sense of responsibility as well as a strong awareness of ethics. Truth comes first, then the story.
This lesson influences me most in the responsibility of being a journalist. I realize lots of things that I didn’t pay attention before need to be rethought whether they’re ethical. I get a good list of ethical problems I cannot neglect in the future and lots of good cases to remind me not to make the same mistakes.
It’s the second time that I can take a class with Dr. Zhong, I feel so good since I can always learn something that I can use in my daily life, like lots of data listed and mentioned in class. Comm409 should be a boring class I think, but what surprised me a lot is I enjoy the class in the whole semester and what I learned is out of my expectation. Tons of appreciation to Dr. Zhong for having a relaxed but meaningful course in my last semester at Penn State.