This course taught me valuable ethical lessons that I can apply not only to my professional career, but throughout my entire life. I believe the lessons learned in COMM409 are topics that everyone should take the time to learn and understand in order to thrive in their personal lives and professions.
The first ethical lesson I took away from this course was the value of transparency and honesty. I believe every good person strives to be honest with themselves as well as with the people they care about, however, throughout this course we dived into the value of honesty in relation to our professional careers. In the professional journalism world, it is crucial to be honest with your editors and co-workers. This establishes a level of trust and professionalism within the work place which is extremely important. It is also necessary to establish trust between you and your readers. The public is vulnerable to the media, and if the media is untrustworthy, then that trust that was built is lost. Journalists have to be transparent with their readers and honest about what they know about a story and what they don’t know. Being transparent and honest is a crucial value in life, especially with journalists in their work.
Another ethical lesson we learned that I took away from this course was the issue of deception and fabrication. As I previously mentioned, when journalists lie to the public and fabricate stories, the public loses their trust in the media. This is a common problem in the journalism industry when journalists lie to get ahead in their careers. It ruins their reputation and it becomes impossible for them to redeem themselves in the journalism industry. We talked about the effect deception can have on journalists and others in Stephen Glass’s case. He decided to fabricate multiple stories in order to get ahead and excel in his job. However, he eventually got caught, and it completely tarnished his reputation at The New Republic. It also tarnished The New Republic’s reputation as well, and significantly impacted his editors and the people he worked with. Learning the importance of not deceiving your readers is an extremely important lesson for all journalists, just as it is extremely crucial not to deceive the people you care about in your own life.
This course has been one of my favorites here at Penn State. It was very though provoking, and it taught me to always look at the bigger picture about how my actions can have a ripple effect on others. It gave me great insight on the common issues within the journalism industry, and how to combat these issues while practicing ethical lessons. I will always remember this course as I pursue a career and will apply these lessons to every aspect of my life.