Where's the Line?

Aaron Baer
ab355005@ohio.edu

The Society of Professional Journalists breaks down their code of ethics into four major parts:

• Seek Truth and Report It
• Minimize Harm
• Act Independently
• Be Accountable

These pillars of SPJ not only spell out the ethical boundaries for a journalist, they also explain what a journalists job is. Somehow journalists have stepped outside these boundaries and unethical journalistic practices have become socially acceptable and the norm for today. How did this happen? Here's one theory...

In our world of multiple 24-hour news networks and live-streaming podcasts the definition of what a journalist's job is has become increasingly convoluted. There's only so much hard news (that will keep ratings up) that can be reported in a day. In order to fill this time, we got introduced to the pundit. It was the pundit's job to offer up "spirited debate" and hopefully a few good sound bites from what perspective or another. However as time has gone on, the distinction between the pundit and the journalist has become increasingly blurred. Journalists have (not-so-subtley) began critically analyzing events and still dare to call it "hard news". For example - Here's Chris Matthews in November right after Barack Obama was elected President:



It is no longer about "seeking truth and reporting it" it's about "making this thing work". Don't get me wrong - I believe there is a time and place for analysis and pundits, but not in the hard news world. As students, I think we have grown up with only a handful of actual journalists (Tim Russert, for example) which has distorted many people's view of the media's job and obligation to society.