Blog 5 – Reflections on this course by Dandan Chen
- I came into this class with just some knowledge of media ethics but now, I am leaving with more than I picture this class to be. Our main duty as a journalists is to serve the public and we should always minimize harm. Two important ethical lesson that I have learned in this course is naming victims of sexual violence and invasion of privacy. I have learned a lot in this class regarding invasion of privacy. Before this class, I knew the basics about privacy but I never knew all the questions that went into deciding if to publish a photo, video, recording, etc. As humans, we decide whether to hold information or not and journalists should always listen to the people. They need to know when to stop before taking it too far. The other lesson that ties in with invasion of privacy is naming victims of sexual violence. If journalists publish the victim of their story, it could harm the victim even further as more people would then know about it. When it comes to sexual victims, journalists needs to listen to the victim and let them decide whether they want their name publish or not.
- The one case study that impressed me the most was the Stephen Glass case. We learned about the case back in January but still to this day, I still can’t understand how someone can risk putting their career and reputation on the line just to tell stories that you think the people would like. Stephen Glass was a highly respected journalist at the New Republic whom everyone trusted. However, one story lead to his downfall and it was discovered that 27 of the 41 articles that he wrote was either fabricated in full or parts. Being a journalist is to inform the public and to report news not to make up stories and publish nonfiction stories. Journalist career is based on the idea of never lying to the people so I don’t understand how and why Glass would lie on almost 75% of this stories. This case shows that not only can you lose your career over this but you can also lose your colleagues.
- This class has really opened my eyes on my career as a journalists and the duties of one. This class has taught me about the consequences of unethical behaviors through all the case studies that we did and this class also taught me that journalists needs to consider their ethical values everyday as the public needs to have faith and trust in the news organization. In a world a “fake news”, the people need to have reliable news source and I now know what I must do to gain the people trust and keep that trust. Trust and credibility is the most important thing in the career of journalism and we must never lose that.
- At first, I regretted this class because of how early in the morning it was but now looking back through all the things that I have learned, waking up and going to class all those times was worth it. This class has taught me a lot about news media ethics and what journalists should a shouldn’t do. This class has prepared me a lot for my future career and even if I don’t end up becoming a journalists, I can always use these ethics that I’ve learned for other careers as well. Overall, I’m really glad I took this class and with Dr. Z because all those early mornings paid off.
This entry was posted in
Uncategorized. Bookmark the
permalink.
