Ethical Lessons from the Foster-Foreman Lectures
Situation Definition :
Ken Dilanian visited State College last Thursday to give us college students some insight on the life of a journalist. Currently, he writes and reports for an abundance of NBC news platforms. In the past, he wrote for the Associated Press, the Los Angeles TImes, USA Today and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Interestingly, he won awards for investigative reporting and also was a foreign correspondent on the Iraq War. He was knowledgeable, truthful, and passionate when sharing his life experiences, clearly a man who has a lot of substantial experience in this field.
There were many ethical messages that were presented in this conference. I would say the two main points that Dilanian covered was how to stay away from biases or sharp angles when writing a story as well as when it is appropriate to keep a source anonymous verse when to share the person’s name. Due to the seriousness and substance of the information he reports, ethical decisions that may seem miniscule become magnified and hold much more at stake.
Analysis:
What I ultimately got out of this conference was that in journalism each decision and thought in done by a case-by-case basis. So many factors play a role into the choices that journalists make when writing and reporting. When it came to biases, I found that predispositions are not good to have when reporting. Being able to clear ones slate of previous ideas or opinions is imperative especially when it comes to properly informing the public. Journalist’s words can be misconstrued if they are not delivered in a thoughtful manner.
In Elizabeth Wissner-Gross’ Unbiased: Editing in a Diverse Society she covers different types of biases and where they come from. She notes that, “Choice of words often gives away the writer’s personal values” as well as “Bias is not to be tolerated in objective journalism. Even when the slant seems to be positive” (Wissner, 1999). These were two main points to me that stuck out when reading on biases from her book. She dives into specific terms to and to not use, ways to avoid taking an angle, and detecting when someone is writing in a biased manner. This ethical message shows that most things we read in the media do have biases in them, therefore as writers we must try our best to avoid doing that and as readers we must be able to properly detect when a story is ‘slanted’.
While reporting and writing with the least amount of bias was a rather understandable concept for me, the ethical message of anonymity was a bit confusing. I was puzzled by how to know the right person or time to keep a source anonymous, especially when it came to reporting on government activity that the public should know about. For instance, when Dilanian chose to keep a senior law enforcement official private in his article covering surveillance since the September 11 attacks.
In a content analysis study, Jayendran Srinivasan talks about the commonly debated topic of anonymous sources. I found from this piece that even people within the journalism field are just as weary about the topic of anonymous sources as I am. She quotes Alicia Shepard “in her 1994 American Journalism Review article saying, “Many journalists feel about anonymous sources the way people in troubled relationships feel about partners: can’t live with them, can’t live without them” (Srinivasan, J. (2006)). That being said, she makes a point to include that some journalists find that having an anonymous sources allows to “obtain information that might otherwise be unavailable” (Srinivasan, J. (2006)). Overall, even in this study the anonymous source usage is really specific to the situation, topic, and persons involved.
Although I do not have personal experience in these two highly debated ethical situations, I would hope as a journalist I would deliberate each article I write as if it were my first. Therefore, I would be highly cautious, aware, and particular on my wording and quoting. Furthermore, I would make sure to respect the sources in which I gathered information from in order to keep my reputation as a writer pure and also to keep good relationships so Ican be trusted for future projects.
Conclusion
As I previously stated, I have learned that these two ethical dilemmas are not something that can be taught or understood before experiencing them first hand. In order to avoid bias there must be a conscious effort in one’s writing to take on a detached voice and strictly report based on facts.
What I learned about using anonymous sources is that it is better to be safe than sorry. Making sure you have a clear and distinct communication with your sources is imperative however also informing the public properly on information they rightfully know is important too.
I found through all of this that journalism is a balancing act of trying to please both readers, sources, while also looking out for yourself. It holds some heavy ethical questions but if one is careful and thoughtful in their work, a story can be informative, unbiased, and please all audiences and participants.
References:
Srinivasan, J. (2006). Anonymous source usage in traditional and public journalism during the 2004 election campaign: A content analysis study. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ddu&AN=EE39066B596EFB24&site=ehost-live
Wissner-Gross, E. (1999). Unbiased Editing in a Diverse Society (Vol. 1st ed). Ames: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4243&context=edtv