An ethical concern mentioned in Caitlin Flanagan’s speech at the Foster-Foreman conference was objectivity and fairness. Flanagan did work that was detailing criminal things that victimized female students, and it is something that could make people very emotional. But, instead of simply being heavily critical of fraternities, Flanagan said she was fair to the fraternities and allowed them to put in their point of view.
Another important ethical concern is reporting on someone who was been a victim of a sexual crime, such as rape. Flanagan said she discussed something comical in her story, and then started to detail a violent rape. These types of stories require extra caution.
Flanagan said she made sure the story was fair because she was writing it for the students, the administration, and the parents. She said it was the first time she actually had to be fair in her job, and she enjoyed it. Journalists need to be objective and not take sides in anything, even in the case of reporting on fraternities involved in rape cases.
Flanagan said that there are some criminals in fraternities, but that not everyone in fraternities is bad. She emphasized that fraternity members can likely be great people and that painting them all as being dangerous is not the right thing to do. The lack of fairness in reporting could also lead to people thinking badly of fraternity members, even at times when they should not. Flanagan is right in that objective journalism is essential, because taking sides will result in misleading the reader because of lack of information.
Television journalism has become more opinion-based over the past decade (Yi, 2015). Instead of focusing on fact-based reporting, opinion pieces are taking over the majority of cable programing. 67 percent of cable news is being devoted to nonfactual news, while only 37 percent is fact-based news (Yi, 2015).
People are now being exposed to citizen journalists that are an alternative to mainstream media (Kim, 2015). Citizen journalists who are not constrained by an editor can publish just about anything they want, and people can often stumble upon heavily –biased and misleading articles.
Although, some news organizations are less biased than others, the question remains whether any article can be purely objective (Kim, 2015). Even sometimes when a reporter tries to be unbiased, his viewpoints can still be noticed, because every person has his own personal viewpoints on issues.
Reporting on rape is a tricky task, because some people may not like to read it. Flanagan started her story off humorously so she could hook the reader, and then she hit them with the story about a violent rape. Some people might think that it is wrong to mislead the reader about the content of the article in the beginning the way she did, because she continued with reporting on something people might be uncomfortable with reading, but I disagree with that.
Leading the reader on and having them think it’s a happy story, then concluding with a somber one is ethical because it is showing the reader something that is important for them to know. Although they may not have wanted to read about a rape, Flanagan was able to get the information read in a unique way that some people may not have liked, but overall she helped raise awareness.
Fairness is obviously important, and that is something that everyone knows. Flanagan explained a few reasons why fairness is needed, saying that the people who are reading the story need the full information. If a reporter is biased and withholds information from the reader, the journalist is being unethical and is essentially lying to the reader.
The most important tactic I learned from Flanagan was the way she was able to get vital information to the reader. Journalists can start off their story talking about a rape, and some readers may just put it down, but she was able to pull the reader in with humor, to allow her to explain something very important. Journalists need to get important information out in creative ways, and starting off a story lightheartedly, then talking about something uncomfortable was ethical and very effective.
References
Kim, M. (2015). Partisans and Controversial News Online: Comparing Perceptions of Bias and Credibility in News Content From Blogs and Mainstream Media. Mass Communication & Society, 18(1), 17-36. doi:10.1080/15205436.2013.877486
YI, Z., & DUKES, A. (2015). Selective Reporting of Factual Content by Commercial Media. Journal Of Marketing Research (JMR), 52(1), 56-76. doi:10.1509/jmr.12.0379