Blog 4 – Overview – Brandon Weber
The two most important ethical issues I thought we discussed and learned this semester were; be truthful in your work and avoid priors at all cost. As a journalist you rely on your audience to be loyal and to continue to read your work. One of the most important qualities you can have to ensure you keep the audience and to grow your audience is by having them trust you, which is why you need to be truthful in all of your work. Another way to stay true to your work is by standing firm on your principles of what you believe. Being a journalist means there will be a variety of subjects that you could have to report on, if there is one that goes against your beliefs and you are only writing it to entertain your audience, you should not write it. Audiences do not just want random stories thrown at them, and if you are not truly committed on a story you will likely not put as much effort into your work and will publish a story that will not have the same quality as your other work. You need to stay true to yourself and your audience if you want to succeed down the road.
Another issue that we talked heavily on, was why you need to avoid priors. There will be incidents as a journalist where you will want to cut corners and add false facts to make your story sound better. However, once you start a habit it becomes apart of your regular cycle when doing research, which will ultimately be hard for you to break. If you are not caught soon in your career then you will continue down the path of altering stories, and then your work will never be truly your own authentic work. Once you are caught, which there is a better chance of not getting caught, no one will trust your previous work or even you as a worker. Mistakes do happen and those are dealt with but when there becomes a pattern than your career will surely be in jeopardy.
The one case study that was the most eye-opening to me was the Stephen Glass Case. Not only did we learn the impact of lying in journalism but also how it can happen so easily without the audience or editors noticing it first. This case study also brought to light how important it is that we have editors in this work field to investigate and background check every story. I learned that no matter how nice or big of an audience you have, if you lie to them, you will lose all the respect and integrity for your career and as a person. This case study showed me two of the most important qualities when you publish your own work, how priors will lead you down the wrong path, and why it is a necessity to be truthful and ethical not only to your audience by yourself as well.
This course has taught me many valuable lessons when it comes to publishing your own work, and the way to about acquiring your information. Everyone wants a good reputation in their career and one of the top ways of doing that is being honest and truthful about your work. I plan on going to Law School following my graduation and I will be required to write law journals on matters dealing with my courses. I will need to provide adequate information on a topic while being able to back up my work with quotes from scholarly works. I will use what I learned from this class to ensure I find the best facts on a topic while I give the proper citations to where I obtained the information to ensure I do not take accountability for anyone else’s work.
Overall I really enjoyed this class due to mainly learning about scandals and fake news and how they were proven to be true or false. Whether it was from national level or local news stations, and how those situations were handled. Especially in today’s day and age, I am sure we will see many more scandals unfold, and it will be upon us to handle them correctly. I realized how detrimental these cases can be to both sides of the party and is why they need to be brought to light to be handled accordingly. Another topic that caught my attention is how we need to work as a team. The final product will be produced with more quality content and faster when the editors, writers, publishers are working together. What I took most from this class was to be truthful and ethical no matter what the situation is. If you do that you will have a successful and content career.