The Importance of Ethics and Trust as a Journalist

Amanda DePerro

ad302410@ohio.edu

Ethics in journalism has been a hot topic in recent years. Critics of “the media” (as if every corner of journalism, including newspapers, magazines, community publications or even the blog you’re reading right now can be generalized so simply) claim that the public should be wary of journalists and that journalists may be less trustworthy and ethical than they were in years past.

Breach of trust

The lack of the public’s trust may be a result of how quickly we are able to access the news. With the help of social networking sites like Twitter, we can get a pinch of information at almost unbearable speeds. With the relatively recent bombing of the Boston Marathon information was a frenzy for both the public, whose demand for detail was almost desperate, and for major media outlets, which were unable to supply such detail due to the cloud of confusion surrounding the entire incident, from what really happened to who was involved.

The New York Post only contributed to the trust issues in journalists’ relationship with the public when they published a cover containing two men’s faces, dubbing them “Bag Men” and claiming “Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.” It was later discovered that the two men were innocent spectators of the marathon. The two would end up suing The New York Post for defamation.

What may have lead to The New York Post’s fierce accusation was the amateur detective work of Internet forums such as 4chan and Reddit, which allow users to post opinions freely and instantaneously. These two sites in particular had already wrongly pegged the two men in The New York Post’s cover image as the bombers. The ability to publish opinions on controversial topics like the Boston Marathon bombing can lead to a form of e-mob mentality, and as shown by The New York Post’s cover, this opinion can spread to other publications.

While 4chan, Reddit and other public forums may not be looked at as “true journalism” in the public eye, the sites do allow members to submit news and opinions anonymously—similar to the likes of Twitter, where users can be pseudo-journalists. However, if publications want to be taken seriously, they need to treat themselves as serious publications and deliver accurate information, rather than forums, in which users can submit incorrect information and often fly off the handle.

Ethics isn’t black and white

With the question of ethics, I’ll continue with the Boston Marathon bombing example. Journalists are often forced to make quick decisions regarding whether the story or image is ethical, but such pressures are in the job description and publications need to be held to a standard of ethics. Sometimes the public’s opinion differs from the publication’s opinion of what is ethical.

One example of such ethical disagreement is when Rolling Stone decided to use an image of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover in order to highlight a piece inside the magazine on how Tsarnaev went from a “popular, promising student,” to a “monster.”

Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/jahars-world-20130717

If the public’s outcry of disgust was piercing, then the sales were deafening. Although many major retailers refused to even sell the magazine plastered with Tsarnaev’s young appearing and innocent-seeming face, Rolling Stone’s sales doubled compared to those of 2012.

Although the line between ethical and unethical differs greatly from one person to the next, Rolling Stone made some advertisers uncomfortable with the release of the cover. Is it right to keep it a secret from advertisers that their ads will be juxtaposed with the image of a killer? Is it ethical to even put this killer’s face on a magazine cover, when someone who had saved lives or been hurt at the marathon could have occupied the space?

These are all questions of ethics that journalists are forced to consider. A journalist must ask whether they, in such a position, would run a controversial cover or story that may alienate their readers or even their advertisers. They are extremely important decisions that have changed, for better or for worse, the public’s opinion of journalists and whether they are ethical and to be trusted.