There was a lot of good content to go over in this class. One of the two lectures that stood out to me was the photojournalism ethics discussion with the guest speaker. I thought it was really interesting when he said that of all of the photos he showed us, he only regretted the river suicide body recovery photo. It puts into perspective the idea that a photographer is there to have an account of the event, regardless of whether or not outlets will use the photos. The ethical decision comes down to those who publish it. But as for the photographer, sometimes you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations to get the shot.
The second was the lesson on copyright. We had discussed this in my media law class a couple semesters ago, so I had some understanding of it, but it’s always interesting to look at new cases. For example, the “Hope” poster actually being held accountable for stealing the photo of Obama surprised me, since it had been modified so much. Just goes to show how blurry that line can be sometimes with regard to fair use.
The case study that I learned the most from was probably the one about “Naming the Victims.” In terms of blurry lines, I think this is the most complicated ethical problem we can deal with. Not just the naming of victims, but anything that has to do with victims and sensitive information. It has the components of a few social problems, like cancel culture and false allegations, combined into one which makes it much harder.
While it may not have been a specific lecture subject or case study, I think Dr. Z really hit home the idea of how being ethical in your everyday life really just makes you a happier person. I’m sure the specifics of what we talked about will come into play in my profession, but what’s more important is the way I live my life around my career. If I’m ethical every step of the way, not just in my work, then my career will benefit from that.
Maybe it’s because it was one of the last Comm classes I’ve had to take, but it seemed like a lot of the information was stuff that I had at least heard about before throughout my education, and it was particularly engaging to have a foundational understanding of these topics before we delved into them deeper. It made discussions more fluid for me since I felt like I knew what I was talking about to some degree.