Ethics and the Decision

Michael Drapcho
md605011@ohio.edu

With the constantly changing landscape of journalism and the media landscape, journalists are faced with numerous questions—questions for themselves and the industry as a whole. One of the largest, if not the single largest, question journalists are currently faced with is: How will the media regain the public’s trust?

How did we lose it in the first place?

Before journalists can go about reclaiming the public’s trust, they must first examine as to why they lost its trust in the first place. If you were to ask the average person why he no longer trusts the media, he would probably respond by saying that journalists are an unethical bunch that is too focused on being first instead of being right.

A recent study of the current perception of the media found that two thirds of the general public believes that the news reported is inaccurate. That is an absolutely astounding finding. Though the majority of reporters do good and accurate work, only one person in every three people believe them.

As I said earlier, most journalists do a good job of reporting the news in both a timely and accurate fashion, but that doesn’t mean that all journalists do. Often times, the stories that are reported inaccurately are results of unethical decisions. These decisions are not unethical in the sense that they are wrong, though they eventually may turn out to be. They are unethical because they were made without reasoning. They were made on gut feelings. Journalists do not report on gut feelings. They report on facts.

When they do act on gut feelings, though, they are often wrong, and media critics simply chalk it up as another mistake by the media. No story within the last few months demonstrates this like the media frenzy that was LeBron James’ “Decision 2.0”.

Reporting facts vs. Speculation

                                                       Photo:Sports Illustrated

When the best basketball player in the world is a free agent, you’d expect he would receive considerable media attention. However, even the biggest of sports fans was shocked by the hurricane of speculation, tweets, TV segments and articles generated by James’ potential return to Cleveland.

It seemed as though every single reporter who ever covered the NBA had the inside scoop on King James’ decision. There were so many people “reporting” on the subject that people stopped believing actual reporters and started believing pastry shops and personal trainers from Cleveland because as one disgruntled fan put it, “You can’t trust the media.”

Was Joshua Teplitz, the personal trainer, eventually correct? Yes, but that is more than likely just a coincidence. Teplitz reported that it was a done deal well before it was even legal for James to reach contract agreement with a team by NBA rules. He also stated that it was a “done deal” before Cavaliers owner, Dan Gilbert met with the coveted free agent.

A similar situation arose with veteran NBA reporter Chris Sheridan, who reported several days before James officially announced his decision that the Akron native would be returning to northeast Ohio. Like Teplitz, Sheridan was correct in the end, but the manner and time of James’ decision did not match what Sheridan reported.

Those two were the correct ones. The number of people that incorrectly stated that LeBron would stay with Miami is too large to imagine. This is a perfect example of journalists grasping at straws because they desperately want to break some news.

On July 11, ESPN basketball reporter Chris Broussard reported that the scathing letter that Gilbert wrote after LeBron’s decision to leave Cleveland in 2010 was keeping LeBron from picking the Cavs. Then not even four hours later, James announced his intentions to return to Cleveland with an exclusive Sports Illustrated essay.

Behavior like that of Sheridan and Broussard is why people do not trust journalists. They put out reports just for the sake of putting out reports, which does nothing but lessen the public’s already fleeting trust.

The only way to buck this trend of public distrust is to report facts and not speculation. Yes, this will slow down the reporting process, but in the end, it will cut down on mistakes and help rebuild the media’s credibility as a whole.