Friday, November 21, 2014

Ethical Issues in The Paper


Katy Andersen 
ka100211@ohio.edu 

The Paper is a movie about a New York Sun reporter and his news team that uncovers a high-profile murder case and is racing to be the first to break the story.  However, within the first twenty-four hours from when the case was discovered to when the story was being printed, several ethical issues arose. 

The first ethical issue is that the City Editor, Henry Hackett, stole information about the case from the desk of another editor’s newspaper during a job interview.  This is stealing another persons’ work.  An ethical journalist should take the time to find out the facts himself.  The newspaper from which he stole the facts from knows that he did it and this not only hurts his reputation but also the newspaper as a whole.  Though newspapers want to be the first to publish the story with as many details as possible, it shouldn’t come down to stealing work. 

One important thing to remember as a journalist is to minimize harm when working on a story.  Hackett did not do a very good job of this when working on this story.  He caused harm to the paper that he stole facts from and he caused harm to his co-workers, literally physically fighting with his Managing Editor, Alicia Clark.  

Another ethical issue is the fact that Alicia approved the paper to print but would not suspend it as soon as she found out that the front-page story was actually false.  Henry found out that the two boys accused of the crime were actually not guilty and were set up because the police really suspect that the mafia was involved. The police allowed the boys to take the fall because they wanted to make people believe that they were on top of their game.  As soon as Henry found this out, he ran back to the newsroom to change the story.  Alicia did not want to stop the printing because a lot of money would have gone to waste.  Instead, she wanted to take the easier route and just apologize to readers the next day for publishing a false story.  Publishing this story could have completely ruined the two teenagers’ lives.   A good journalist seeks the truth and reports it.  Henry was persistent that the correct story be published and wouldn’t give up without a fight… literally. 

In the end, at the last minute, Alicia called off the paper, updated the story to include the truth and printed it on the front page, stating that the boys are innocent.  It turns out that the New York Sun is the newspaper to break the story.  Though they might have lost money by wasting the papers first printed, I’m sure they made up for them in sales by being the first to report the truth.  When people know they can count on you to report the facts, they are more likely to be loyal and buy your paper.  Being such a high-profile case, I am sure this story boosted the paper’s reputation. 

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