Throughout this semester we have learned a variety of different ethical issues and topics. One of the ethical issues that I learned the most from was the privacy issue. Privacy showed us that there are certain times when it’s okay to report on things that may breech privacy, and when you should seriously consider when to report and how far you need to take the reporting. Another thing that it taught me is that there are things that I never thought were privacy issues until learned in class. Before this class, I knew it was morally wrong, at least in my eyes, to report very heavily on someone’s death, but now I know that in some ways it can be a breech of privacy. I also re-learned that there are things that breech privacy, like with the videos and pictures of Prince Harry that we were shown in class and the differences between each one of those.
Another issue that I learned more about what the use of Photoshop in pictures that are used in reporting. I never thought that just taking away someone’s legs in a picture is a form on deception in the eyes of ethical values in journalism. I always believed the deception in pictures topic was mainly toward changing the way someone looks in a picture or the way the picture is made to be believed and seen in the eyes of the public. Now I know that there are a huge variety of the ways that a photo can be considered deceptive in the eyes of ethical values in journalism
The case study that I thought was very interesting was the Stephen Glass and Shattered Glass case study and story. I had actually never heard of Stephen Glass before this class, and I was really interested in the story of everything that he did. You rarely hear stories of journalists that committed very ethical issues about lying and fabrication in their stories, and my first time hearing about anything related to that was with Brian Williams, but this Stephen Glass case and story took it to a whole different level, and it really made me look at the way that journalists tell their stories and do their reporting.
This course as a whole has opened my eyes to a lot of things that, before, I thought were just common knowledge, but now I realize there is a whole backstory and technique on how to go about reporting your story. I very much enjoyed the class.