SITUATION
American writer and reporter, Douglas Blockmon, spoke at Penn State on Thursday, October 25, in front of students and faculty. Blackmon spoke of his extolled career and experience in the reporting industry. Some of his notable journalism experience includes his coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the inauguration of Barack Obama. Blackmon also worked for Wall Street Journal. In 2008, Blackmon published his novel Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Slavery By Another Name won Blackmon the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
While Blackmon expressed a myriad of intriguing ideas throughout his lecture, two issues he covered that greatly stood out to me were the issues of safety while reporting and truth-telling.
ANALYSIS
The issue of safety should be of prominent interest to journalists because their main goal is to provide accurate information to the public, which sometimes can be dangerous to cover. Some journalists will do anything and everything to provide the most eye-opening, alluring stories, therefore they need to remember safety is also important. Blackmon spoke of his time in Croatia in 1995 during the country’s period of conflict. There was one instance he described of him driving on a highway when a shower of mortar shells were being fired through the air, hit, and damaged his car. It was after this experience occured, when he asked himself whether or not he should continue his story; he chose to continue.
This situation struck me as significant because it caused me to think of how much journalists risk their well-being and safety to do their jobs. In a scholarly article, A Guide to Journalism Teachers in the Arab States, statistics are provided on the death rates of journalists covering conflict. “According to our statistics, there have been almost 3000 journalists and other media staff killed in work-related incidents since 1990. Many of these killings resulted from risks of covering armed conflicts such as being caught up in crossfire incidents,” the article states. The sad truth of journalism is that in many cases, journalists choose to risk and sometimes lose their lives, all for a story.
The second topic Douglas Blackmon discussed was truth-telling. In class we discuss truth-telling in depth because it is such an essential ethical issue journalists must value. Unfortunately, like the Stephen Glass case, there are situations in which journalists may ignore the value of truth in order to provide a decent story. Blackmon even recalled a situation that occurred during his career when The New York Times stole Blackmon’s oil spill story in 2010, and later won a Pulitzer Prize for it. This instance stood out to me greatly because the NYT are such credible and respected news outlet that many greatly trust.
In a scholarly article, The Enduring Problem of Journalism: Telling the Truth, Kathy Roberts Forde analyzes that issues in journalism truth-telling may not always be in the content of the information provided, but also the way in which the published information is gathered. “Issues of truth-telling inhere not only in the content of news reports but also in the information gathering stages of a journalist’s work,” Forde states. This reference correlates with Blackmon’s experience of The New york Times stealing his story. The information in the story was accurate, but the Times’ gathering of the information was not truthful because they took it from Blackmon.
CONCLUSION
After listening to Douglas Blackmon speak, I felt inspired and educated even further on the ethics of journalism and their importance. Blackmon is such a respected journalist who has experienced, first-handedly, situations that called for him to consider the journalism ethics of safety and truth. His reflections on these issues were of notability and inspiration to any aspiring journalist.
The journalism field is highly competitive. Each news outlet and journalist is racing against the next in order to create the most alluring news stories to the public first. Along with the prevalent pressures faced by journalists to accomplish their best work in a timely fashion, come the ignorant and negligent behaviors some journalists engage in; all for a story. The issues of safety and truth-telling are of utmost importance in the journalism field. No journalist should have to lost a life to publish the best story; No audience should read an untruthful story because of a journalist’s irresponsibility.
REFERENCES
Model Course on Safety of Journalists; A Guide To Journalism Teachers in the Arab States, 2017. United Nations Educational. UNESCO
Forde, K. R. (2012). The Enduring Problem of Journalism: Telling the Truth. Journal of Magazine & New Media Research, 13(1), 1–9. Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=87590149&site=ehost-live&scope=site