Situational Definition:
On Wednesday night, John Eligon delivered a presentation to a packed room filled with College of Communications students. He informed students about his previous role as a journalist. Throughout his presentation, Eligon used many anecdotes that related to his life. Students in the room seemed fascinated by his life stories. One major ethical issue that Eligon stressed on was the fact that as journalist, it is your job to only report what you see. He said that as a journalist, you cannot get upset about what people say or comment on your story, your only job was to report what was seen. Another ethical issue that he brought up on Wednesday night was about how to bring yourself into a story or report but not make it all about you. He provided the audience with many real life experiences that students could easily relate to even if they have not had any real world experience as a journalist yet.
Analysis:
As mentioned above, one of the main ethical issues that Eligon spoke about was how to bring yourself into a story but not make the whole story about you. When talking about this ethical issue, he shared a few of his real world experiences. He explained that when he reports, he wants to add as much detail in as possible so he chooses to place himself into the story that he is reporting. One time when he was in Nebraska, he was writing a story about someone who had passed away. While attempting to gather info for the story, someone reported him as a suspicious person. He went on to explain how black and white reporters are treated differently depending on the case.
For example, when he was reporting the Michael Brown shooting, he noted that white reporters were struggling to gather information to report their stories. Due to the fact that where the shooting took place was a predominately black area, those people at the scene trusted colored reporters and felt more comfortable answering their questions. However, when tables were turned and Eligon was in a predominately white area in Nebraska, people in the community did not trust him to report their story. When researching this topic on my own, I learned that this happens to journalist too frequently, New Statesman released an article about a South African journalist who was arrested purely for conveying facts that police were covering up (“South African journalist arrested”, 1980).
His main point however, was that if he wanted to change his story and report negatively about the people in the Nebraska community that reported him as a suspicious person, he could have. If he made himself sound like the victim in his own story, he would have completely changed what it was supposed to be about instead of reporting what he had seen.
He also stated many times that it is important to remain non bias when writing. Although people in Nebraska reporting him as a suspicious person was offensive and rude, he did not include this in his story because it would have made his story extremely biased. An article stated, “having objectivity as the dependent variable and professional roles as the independent variable—we move a step forward from the journalists’ perceptual level to the performative level by looking at the implementation of both the objectivity norm and professional roles in news content.” (Mellado, Humanes, Ramirez, 2017).
Conclusion:
Although I did enjoy this speaker, I did not learn anything new. However, Eligon opened my eyes and made me think about how racism is still a very prominent issue around the United States. In Eligon’s career as a journalist, he experienced many classic examples of racism first hand. It is extremely important to talk about these issues especially to young students aspiring to be journalists.
Eligon made it clear that his passion is reporting and writing. When he goes out into the field to report, he should not be bothered by racism issues regarding his own skin color. I did enjoy Eligon’s advice about immersing yourself into the story, without making yourself a part of the story.
References
Mellado, C., Humanes, M. L., & Márquez-Ramírez, M. (2017). The influence of journalistic role performance on objective reporting: A comparative study of Chilean, Mexican, and Spanish news. International Communication Gazette, 80(3), 250-272. doi:10.1177/1748048517711673
South African journalist arrested. (1980, Sep 19). New Statesman, 100, 3. Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/docview/1306958447?accountid=13158