This semester my eyes were opened to many trials and tribulations that come along with being a journalist, whether that is written, photographic, broadcasted, etc. — there are an excessive amount of regulations that must be abided by for the sake of remaining objective as well as humane. One that stood out to me was the stipulations that come along with covering a sexual assault report or a child sex abuse case, and this stood out to me because since learning about it I have read multiple recent case coverages that disregard these standards. These cases go far too in-depth regarding detail of the initial incidents themselves. Another lesson I learned from the course was fair use and copyright issues because it related directly to the work I have been doing within the world of freelance. There are a lot of enhancements that strengthen my blog, but I have to make sure things like photographs that I pull from the internet — if they are not my own — they need to be labeled for non-commercial reuse.
The case study that stood out most to me was the Stephen Glass because there hasn’t really been a case that has seen that magnitude of fabrication before. It really made me question his character specifically because of how he handled the situation before, during and after his manipulation of The New Republic and their readers. For someone to seemingly feel no remorse after the fact — writing and publishing a novel about a character very similar to himself and profiting off of it substantially — allows me to believe that there are some sociopathic tendencies in their nature.
From here, I feel like the contents of this course will allow me to be a lot more conscientious when creating my own journalistic work, no matter the media I choose, because even accidents that are presented to the general public can have unforgiving consequences. I want to make sure I take these lessons into my career as a multimedia journalist so that I won’t be put at risk for making such mistakes.
I am very gracious for the intent that Dr. Z carried throughout the entire course because it made me care about the subject matter that is extremely relevant to my studies and intended career. I feel like the class could have been a bit more engaging at times because there were instances where I felt the central idea of the lecture was lost amongst the rest of the content. But other than that I felt like this course was incredibly valuable knowledge to carry with myself the rest of my life and it also established a great starting point to continue learning about journalistic ethics.