The Great Ethical Debate.... Over and Over Again

I found this past weeks’ presentations more interesting than usual.  I liked the topic, because there are not necessarily black and white rules for everything when it comes to ethics.  This caused a debate, even in our class of students with similar morals and religious beliefs. I found an interesting book addressing something that we briefly touched on, and that was sensitivity during war.  In this article, it talks about how journalists had to become more careful in their reporting as the Rwandan genocide became more and more disastrous. They had to take a step back and ask themselves if they were treating the people as human beings, or just as another story to print. http://www.i-m-s.dk/files/publications/CSJ%20Background%20Paper%20(24%20january%202011).pdf Group B also did a nice job of helping the class to understand just how difficult ethics can be.  Instead of having a PowerPoint, they created a small-group activity that helped us to learn about ethics in journalism by giving us different cases to discuss and present.  In order to do this we used these 10 questions linked here:   

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/everyday-ethics/talk-about-ethics/1750/ask-these-10-questions-to-make-good-ethical-decisions/

Group A used Linda Greenhouse, a journalist who made actions that were debatably unethical as an example of a journalist that is not acting independently.  They said that, “journalists can’t be isolated, but can’t be completely involved either.” I found an article telling both sides of the Linda Greenhouse story, and her involvement in both an abortion rally and her speech on Guantanamo Bay.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6146693

Overall, I thought both presentations were both informative and thought-provoking, everything a presentation should be! 

Journalism as Watchdog

Group 8 probably had the most entertaining presentation so far in class.  They were all funny and charismatic and added life to their presentation, rather than just making it bland and boring. 

Their presentation was on Journalism as a watchdog.  In an ideal society, this would not be necessary, but the world we live in is anything but idea.  With corruption in every corner, especially in the government and conglomerate corporations, it is necessary that we have people who bring the truth to the public.  This is where the journalists come in. The story of Deep throat and President Nixon is perfect example of this need.  Below is a YouTube clip from a movie made about deep throat and the Nixon scandal.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjZ_D1j8cis

The group also talked about how the role of journalists can be weakened if it turns into a form of amusement, rather than a source of information and truth.  This means therefore, that we must stay objective and straightforward in our reporting while being actively curious.  The group mentioned a study done by Andrew Kohut and since I could not remember who that was exactly, I looked him up.  Here is a link to the short biography I found on Kohut:

http://www.people-press.org/about/andrew-kohut/ I found that he is the President of Pew Research Center, duh!

            I was really curious about the statistics given on Political affiliation in journalism, I found this article that disproved it, stating that 32% were Democrats, and about 31% were Republicans. http://www.journalism.org/node/2304

This was just a single survey disproving what the book was saying, but besides that point, it still makes me wonder if journalists should align with a certain party, because it would make it hard to be objective. Just something to think about…