Ethics and Journalism (short answers)

1. Define (or describe) ethics.

Most societies have standards for what is considered ethical, or "the right thing to do".  Western societies ethics are based in large part on the Bible’s Ten Commandments.  Ethics are rules for the civil conduct of a society’s members and possible outcomes for incivil behavior.  It is important to note that doing the right thing matters whether or not anyone is paying attention.

Ethics are often conditional, unfortunately.   Many times, the right thing to do depends on the situation at hand and/or who’s involved.  There are times when the right thing is the wrong thing, but this is a very subjective call and may well be deemed wrong by later observers.  Unethical behavior, even if unnoted by anyone else, still has to be lived with by the person who commits them.

2. Define (or describe) journalism.

Journalism attempts to convey the who, what, where, why, when, what for, and how of events or places.  Journalism is the original tele (far) vision (sight).  The journalists tell what they see to those who aren’t there.  Ideally, the journalist is only commenting on what they see, without giving a subjective interpretation of what they see and what it means.

However, the nature of language and the many different words available to describe an event or person can lead the writer to be unintentionally subjective in the reporting of said event or person.  Intentionally portaying an event or person is widely known as slanting the news, and while the writer may be "straight", the editor may demand changes or may re-write an article to slant it in ways the publication (or media) desires; to influence the way it’s seen by the consumers of the journalist’s output.

There are many kinds of journalism, which is a broad term that covers many forms of reporting and investigation.  All have their own idiosycracies.  Television reporting is fundamnetally different from print reporting, in that it is much more visually oriented than print media is.  Now, in the 21st century, we have a confluence of these two types of media, and as high-speed internet connectivity becomes more prevalent, this confluence has generated a new form of journalism that is more visual while retaining much of the depth that the printed word can convey.  The journalist can describe what they see, and also present pictures of what is there too.

Some journalism is specifically orientented towards conveying a viewpoint of interpretation. The Opinion/Editorial pages of a newspaper, for example, specifically gives interpretations of events to their readers, and, in effect, tells them what to think about what they are reporting.

3. Explain what is ethical journalism?

Ethical journalism tells who, what, why, where, when, and how, and leaves the interpretation to the reader/consumer.

4. Name an ethical journalist.

This is actually a difficult question – I read a lot of Opinion and Commentary peices, which by their nature are slanted and tell the reader what the writer thinks at least, if not how the readers should see the subjects.  The paper I deliver has it’s own Opinion writers, which I sometimes agree with and sometimes don’t.  Does that make them ethical sometimes and not at others?  A fair answer is "no", it doesn’t.  It is a matter of opinion, and one may be right and the other wrong or vice versa.

The ethical journalist  presents a viewpoint, based on their interpretation of events seen or places visited; one that is not slanted in such a way as to unduly influence the consumer of the journlist’s output.

Since these questions were relayed by a writer here who is taking a class on Journalism and Ethics, undoubtably much more can be said of each of these subjects.  these are thus short answers to complex questions.

In this diary, I attempt to be as ethical as I can, but it is a very subjective medium, and is personal to me.  In the strictest interpretation of what is written above, I am not the most ethical journalist, since I often use the words I write to influence and shape opinions as best I can.  What readers see in what I write is of course ultimately decided by how they themselves are influenced by the way I write something, and ocaissionally, that interpretation is not the one I meant to convey.  This is part of the nature of human interaction, and not to be regreted too much.  After all, if all my readers thought the same way I do, what would be the point of writing something everyone knows already?

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