Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Journalism Fakes Hurting the Profession as a Whole

Emily Mueting

Society of Professional Journalists, Radio Television Digital News Association, American Society of Magazine Editors, Online News Association, Public Relations Society of America, American Advertising Federation and National Press Photographers Association are all organizations that fall under the journalism category. All of these organizations also have their own ethical codes that tend to follow for the basic ethical values of journalists. Ethical codes are used to help support values and assist journalists with the hard ethical choices they will face.

Similarities in codes among journalist organizations

Many of these codes overlap between the organizations, and that is due to the values they support. Trust, unbiased reporting and fairness, truth and independence from outside pressures are all important values that are universal among the journalistic world.

Another similarity in the codes of journalists is the idea of personal integrity. Because of this, codes are not enforced, but rather guidelines. RTDNA stresses in the preamble of their ethics code, truth. If a journalist does lie to the public, not only will they be breaking the values and codes, they will be hurting their own personal integrity. This was the case with Stephen Glass when he was discovered to be an unethical journalist.


Stephen Glass- Courtesy of vanityfair.com


Glass and public trust

Glass was a journalist for The New Republic who in 1998 was discovered to have fabricated stories for three years for TNR as well as other magazines. With fake sources, quotations and events over that time, it was aware to the journalistic world that it is more important than ever to be ethical journalists. Journalists like Glass give a bad name to their organization and journalism as a whole.

The public’s trust is currently quite low. According to the Pew Research Center’s data collected between July 17 and 21, 2013, 71 percent of people believe that journalists try to cover up their mistakes rather than admit them. In addition, 67 percent of these people believe that stories are often inaccurate.

As student studying journalism ethics, I find these numbers embarrassing. I understand how hard a truly ethical journalist works to preserve a positive image of journalism, however it is much harder to gain trust than it is to lose it. Just like the old saying about taking years to make friends and only seconds to lose them, it can take generations for the public to trust the journalists, and a few individuals to ruin it.

Even in Hollywood, journalists are portrayed in negative ways. For example, in the Spiderman trilogy, Peter Parker is a freelance photojournalist who makes a living by staging photos of himself as Spiderman to sell to the newspaper. Negative portrayals and real life frauds ruin the integrity of journalists everywhere.

Whether it is Peter Parker snapping a shot of himself swinging from a building or Stephen Glass dreaming up an entertaining and humorous story based on fictional events with quotes from people in his head, journalists need to look out for frauds and make sure they follow the values of journalism and the codes established by journalist organizations like RTDNA and SPJ in order to ensure the public that the news they consume is trustworthy and factual.

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