For the past two years, the #MeToo movement has been a rallying cry for women and men who have been affected by some type of sexual assault or harassment. This is why the ethical lessons in which we learned about the victims of such cases stood out to me and seemed the most relevant for the state of today’s journalism. When reporting cases that involved victims of sexual assault or harassment, I did not consider the consequences that may arise when choosing to include a victim’s name in a report prior to taking this course. I held the assumption that when victim’s names are deliberately included or excluded from a piece was because they gave consent to the journalist to do so. I now realize that journalists, in some unfortunate cases, include a victim’s name when they deem it to be important to the story. Of course, this class taught me the ethically ground decision is one that takes many factors into account: one of which being the safety of the victim involved. Another factor is the wellbeing of all people involved in the case, as well as informing the public of the necessary information.
Secondly, I learned the importance of taste when it comes to photojournalism. Photojournalism is a topic I had very little knowledge of before taking COMM409. I was aware of the phenomena that things that are newsworthy are typically negative. This made me assume that most news front pages included graphic or dramatized images of catastrophic events for a reason. However, I am now aware of the deliberate decisions that photojournalists make to protect people. Faces will not be included to protect victims or graphic images will be excluded to spare viewers of distress.
A case study that stood out the most to me was Stephen Glass’s. Watching the rapid rise of his journalistic career is admirable and exciting at first, but seeing his entire career fall apart from his snowballing lies stressed me out. The thought of ruining my entire career from haughtiness rather than hard work is terrifying. The extent of fabrication that Glass attempted to pull off was a reminder that fabrication does not work for the ethical journalist.
This course will now allow me to thoughtfully mull over every step in the journalistic process moving forward. Although I do not want to be a journalist — in the professional sense of the title — I still want to publish content in different forms of media; which still relies on the ethics of publishing and the effect it has on the public.
Entering this course, I thought that ethics would be a no-brainer. The right decision and the wrong decision should be obvious. I now know this is not the case. Nearly every case presented in class had different sides that had me conflicted as to what the right decision was. The ethical decision-making process requires logical thinking and consideration for every facet of a case. Dr. Zhong eloquently pointed out the formal qualities of ethical journalism that I had not considered before and I will value this for the rest of my career in media usage.