Blog 5 – Reflection on Comm 409 by Nathan Long

1. Ethical Lessons from this Course

One of the first ethical lessons that I was taught in this course is the idea of “Conflicts of Interest.”  I believe that in the news industry, it is the reporters’ responsibility to be unbiased in every story they write, and if they feel they cannot write an unbiased story because of a personal conflict, they should not report on the story at all.  The example that was presented in class was an analogy to referees in a football game.  This analogy explains how if a referee were to say which team they think is better before the game, fans, coaches, and players may suspect a bias, which would be unfair to one team.  I personally related to this because football is by far my favorite sport to watch, and while I have not seen any referees specifically say which team they think is better prior to the game, I have seen games where I believed the referees were showing a clear bias towards one team.  Being unbiased and leaving personal conflicts out of reporting are the easiest ways for reporters to earn trust from their audience, which is the most important aspect of their careers.

Another important ethical lesson that stood out to me from this course was “Invasion of Privacy.”  I believe that a person’s right to privacy is a natural right.  Whether it is a written law or not, it is not fair to invade on a person’s privacy without consent, or probable cause.  We discussed the four categories that privacy can fall into, including intrusion, private facts, false light, and appropriation.  I personally think that intrusion is the most severe of those, because it is an invasion of privacy on a physical level.  This goes beyond the idea of publishing irrelevant or false stories on a person.  Trespassing on someone’s personal property should never be acceptable for a responsible journalist.

 

2. Case Study

The case study from this semester that stood out to me the most was the story of Eric Tucker, the Twitter user that my group reported on for our group project.  While Eric is not necessarily a journalist, it is still a good example of how posting something without fact checking can have negative repercussions.  It also raises the question of what constitutes as a journalist.  While there will always be a place for professional journalists, the rise of social media in recent years shows how anyone can report news and how quickly it can spread.

3. Impact on my career

I personally am in the College of Communications because I would like to work on the organizational side of broadcasting or news companies, as opposed to actually reporting or being on TV myself.  But I do believe that this course will help me in the future because it taught me how to make an ethical decision in any situation, while using news outlets as an example.  Everyone will have to make tough ethical decisions at some point in their life, whether it is family, friends, or careers, and I will be able to look back on this class to help me make a decision as they appear in my own life.

4. Reflection on Comm 409

This class was, by far, one of my favorite classes this semester.  It is one of the few classes that actually made me think about why I am going about my day the way I am on a deeper level.  Most of my other classes were just memorizing facts and regurgitating them on exams and papers, but this class opened my eyes to things I had not seen before.  Even outside of the content of the class, having it so early in the morning helped me get a jump-start on my day.  This was my only class on Mondays and Wednesdays this semester, and once I wake up I would rather stay up than go back to sleep, so it forced me to have a reasonable sleep schedule, and to be productive early in the day.

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