Blog 5
Alanna Boston
A couple of ethical lessons I have learned from participating in COMM 409 were broad, yet simple. The first would be to keep a sense of humanity as a journalist, because I service the people. If the people cannot connect to me on a humane level, I have not done my job right. The last lesson would be to be completely honest, always. The public is owed the truth, and it is my job to report nothing but that. Facts are the basis of my career as a journalist, and one little lie or exaggeration can hurt a plethora of people.
A case study I was inspired by was the case study I chose for my presentation. Rolling Stone’s “A Rape on Campus” is the first case study I dissected to focus on the ethical and unethical values of the reporting, and of the story itself. The unethical manners impressed me because the story was overlooked and even edited by others aside from the reporter, but the shock factor after the story’s unethical attributes were called out were unbelievable. Everyone was so surprised but had to have known that it was an inappropriate piece to publish. It was so bad that the story was even retracted, so there had to have been some doubt before publishing.
COMM 409 taught me a lot of ethical basics and has given me hands on experience to be able to identify ethical and unethical situations. The course is appreciative because it uses real life situations and creates real conversations to leave an impact on the students enrolled, instead of just being lectured for over an hour. The energy in Dr. Z’s class is worth the enrollment. School can be boring, but he makes a class worthwhile.