This course helped me understand the ethical questions and concerns that are frequently raised in media and journalism. One important ethical lesson I learned about was about fabrication and deception. I understood the importance of those specific ethical issues more when we learned about Stephen Glass and watched the film based on his life “Shattered Glass.” Discussing this topic through the experience he had was something that stood out to me because it showed the consequences of being deceptive and fabricating stories, even lying outright. Another ethical lesson I remember clearly was when we discussed fake news and the history of it. With President Donald Trump popularizing the term, many people thought fake news was just news they did not agree with, but to actually find out the history of it and the actual fake news out there. These two ethical lessons I feel to be very important because of how they might seem uncommon but can actually be very common.
The case study that impressed me the most this semester was the one about the Car in the Canal. The issue that was raised was the usage of the 911 call made by the person in the car and whether the news stations should use the recording of it or not. What really made this impactful on me was the actual recording and how it uncomfortable it made me feel. The other thing about this that made it interesting was how three news stations used the recording differently and how there really did not seem like there was a right way of doing it.
This course is one that should be taken by everyone in any field because the ethical issues discussed in this course can apply across majors and colleges. For me, I am still unsure if print journalism is the future I want to take. However, I still see this class as extremely important because it helped me understand the importance of ethics and also how the media thinks about ethical issues. This will help me understand the media in general in the future, as well as understanding people in the workplace and what ethical dilemmas they might be facing.
This course as a whole really was very informative and interesting. Covering so many topics might seem like a lot to do, but going over case studies and having the lectures on Canvas made it easier to understand for me. Each class was interesting because it was a new topic almost every single week so nothing felt tiring or repetitive.