The New Era of Ethics

Louis Baragona
lb699911@ohio.edu

Ethics are not black and white. The grey area of ethics is vast and hard to navigate. As journalists, what are our shared ethics? What are ethical rules unique to each individual journalist as we differ in style of writing and reporting? What are our shared limits? There are a lot of questions in creating an ethical moral compass and in an era of journalism in new places and through new mediums, journalists are having to learn to develop quick-thinking skills in defining their own ethical values.

The major popularity of the internet and the idea of the average citizen as a journalist has brought about questions of ethics. How are journalists to maintain an ethical code when citizens are able to easily report the news to an ever-broadening audience and infiltrate ethical values with their own beliefs? Citizens don't have the job titles or career motivations of journalists representing media conglomerates or networks. Citizens don't have the branding of PR professionals or the spin-to-win motivations of advertising workers. The idea of a new era of journalism, in which each individual has the ability to report the news at their own fingertips, raises many ethical dilemmas for journalists.

The internet has also raised questions about graphic content and exactly how much is too much. With the recent murder of James Foley, many online web sources were called out for posting graphic video, or screenshots from the video, of his execution. The internet provides a forum for uncensored reporting, an ethical dilemma on how much the public needs and should be shown. The internet has no established moral compass, just a bit of legal coverage in order to make sure things stay within the confines of the law, with plenty of loopholes and mishaps along the way. 

Reporting has also taken a new turn with a millennial culture obsessed with privacy- or lack thereof. TMZ, E! News, and US Weekly all employ writers and reporters that are, by definition, qualified journalists, but often deemed unethical in their execution. These sources of news, which focus on the lives of celebrities, intersect with the internet to create a perfect storm of ethical challenges. TMZ can easily obtain particularly unflattering materials, many of which could be deemed unethical in their release and reporting, with the help of the internet. A recent example could be made of Jennifer Lawrence, among others, whose private cell phone was hacked and the contents (including private, explicit pictures) were leaked in their entirety for full public view on the internet, by Perez Hilton on his blog PerezHilton.com. Hilton later removed the photos, claiming that what he had done was unethical and hurtful to Lawrence, but the damage had been done. These outlets of a celebrity-obsessed culture have led journalism to be viewed as completely unethical by celebrities pleading to the media to be left alone. Their existence, the stalker-ish discomfort of their reporting and content, is deemed by many to be a completely unethical practice.

There are two sides of to every story deemed unethical.

The idea of citizens being able to participate in coverage and live-report in real time is exciting and certainly sounds ethical in its execution. A college degree or high-level job do not a journalist make. In the expanses of the internet there have been pieces of citizen-type journalism that have done great things and spread crucial information for the public around us.

Being able to see uncensored content is at times necessary. A lot of the recent content out of Ferguson, MO has been deemed graphic, but at the same time has been also heralded as real news, as primary sources in the hopes of forging toward what's right. Journalism does have to be raw and can be unattractive and aesthetically difficult, but it's where to censor that is a grey area.

Celebrity journalism websites are statistically fascinating. They garner some of the greatest traffic on the internet and have helped expand many websites from startups to standard daily routine for the average person with even a slight interest in A-list culture. An interest in the lifestyles of the rich and famous is not unethical in its natural occurrence. Where journalists draw the line between public information and private exposures is a more difficult road to navigate.

As journalists we have a lot of questions and we face a lot of factors. We have reached a new era of the changing definitions of ethical values. We have a lot of additions to our craft from the outside world and we have new areas of journalism to scorn or embrace. As time expands journalism, our ability to create ethical standards has seemed to include even more grey area. My personal belief is that at our core, journalists are important and there are some values each of us must hold true to, but as we grow and change with the development of reporting and writing we are forced to explore what exactly journalism is and who exactly journalists are in order to search for a moral code or compass to guide us through the grey area.