Ethical Lessons
Throughout this semester, I learned a variety of ethical lessons through this class and the material taught in it. First off, I learned of the ethical lesson of having a diverse newsroom. In this day and age, this is important because it is valuable to be able to have outside opinions and different perspectives when stories are produced on difficult subjects such as race or social class or anything like that. We talked about this topic in class, yet I did not think it was a big deal until that time. Prior to that, I was not aware of the value that this ethical lesson has.
Secondly, I learned about the ethical lesson of gaining and maintaining trust with your co-workers and audience as a journalist. We started off the course by watching the movie “Shattered Glass” and I learned a lot through that movie. As we saw, there is no coming back from a mistake like the one Stephen Glass made to fabricate sources and stories in totality. This ethical lesson showed me that telling the truth and reporting the truth is one of the most important lessons to learn and it is the key to being a good journalist.
Case Study
The case study that I learned that impressed me the most was the one my group studied for our presentation and research paper. I was fortunate to receive the topic of conflict of interest as it was one I was actually interested in learning about. In the case study, Global Television news anchor and journalist, Leslie Roberts was suspended indefinitely in 2015 from his network after an investigation found that he was secretly the part owner of a small public relations firm whose clients – lawyers, small businesses and others – appeared on his show. This case study impressed me the most because it was the first time I truly understood what conflict of interest was. Prior to this class, I always had an idea, but never saw a story that showed me conflict of interest in a clear and simple sense. It also proved to me how helping your friends and pees isn’t always the best choice in a professional workplace. You need to know the rules and understand what is best for your own career.
Impact and Reflection
Looking forward to my future career and life, I do believe that this course will have a lasting impact on me. It’s every day that I will be faced with some sort of ethical dilemma. Whether it is big or small, the lessons I’ve learned through this class will help me make the best decision I can. Being ethical and moral will always be two attributes I try to apply to my life, in and out of the workplace. After reading case studies about how journalists and other professionals have ruined their career by making the mistakes that they did, it gave me real world examples about how I should not take my career lightly. Taking shortcuts will not help me in the long run. It will hurt me. I will make sure to take the concepts I learned in this class and apply them to any situation I feel they are necessary. Overall, I would recommend this class to anyone, regardless of whether or not they are majoring in the communications field. I feel like the lessons learned in this class are important for anyone to know as they could come up on a daily basis for anyone. Being ethical and moral is vital for anyone to live a good and truthful life. I believe that everyone should be able to learn that lesson and see for themselves that it is the truth.