Spin

Krystina Fox

Kf698107@ohio.edu

This is a pretty controversial story, especially to us as journalists. We are faced with ethical questions everyday as what to include in our stories. A big ethical question we face in today's journalistic world is how to edit. We have already talked in class some about editing, especially picture editing, but now we talk about editing stories. I personally believe it is wrong to edit a story in a misleading way to give it spin. Many journalists do this, put spin on stories, on a regular basis with the news we are fed today. Some of the more popular networks that are known for spin are the Fox News Network and MSNBC.

But when does spin become lies??? I remember a similar controversy with Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine. The editing Moore used in his moving film was very misleading which ended up ruining Moore's credibility for a majority of people, including myself. Moore, while having a moving message, falsefied it when he LIED through editing. Very similar to the story of O'keef. You can see Moore's fallacies here.

One of the best quotes in the article we read would be from journalist Al Tompkins who was outraged by this journalistic misfire, ""I tell my children there are two ways to lie," Tompkins said. "One is to tell me something that didn't happen, and the other is not to tell me something that did happen. I think they employed both techniques in this."

Omitting truths or events in hopes to mislead your audience is hands down unethical. It is what I believe is one of the MAJOR problems with journalism today. Society trusts us to tell the whole truth and nothing but... its a shame to see journalists use there positions to push forward their own agendas.