The Paper is a movie about a New York Sun reporter and his news team
that uncovers a high-profile murder case and is racing to be the first to break
the story. However, within the first twenty-four
hours from when the case was discovered to when the story was being printed, several
ethical issues arose.
The first ethical issue is that the
City Editor, Henry Hackett, stole information about the case from the desk of
another editor’s newspaper during a job interview. This is stealing another persons’ work. An ethical journalist should take the time to
find out the facts himself. The newspaper
from which he stole the facts from knows that he did it and this not only hurts
his reputation but also the newspaper as a whole. Though newspapers want to be the first to
publish the story with as many details as possible, it shouldn’t come down to
stealing work.
One important thing to remember as a
journalist is to minimize harm when working on a story. Hackett did not do a very good job of this
when working on this story. He caused
harm to the paper that he stole facts from and he caused harm to his
co-workers, literally physically fighting with his Managing Editor, Alicia
Clark.
Another ethical issue is the fact that Alicia approved the
paper to print but would not suspend it as soon as she found out that the
front-page story was actually false.
Henry found out that the two boys accused of the crime were actually not
guilty and were set up because the police really suspect that the mafia was
involved. The police allowed the boys to take the fall because they wanted to
make people believe that they were on top of their game. As soon as Henry found this out, he ran back
to the newsroom to change the story. Alicia
did not want to stop the printing because a lot of money would have gone to
waste. Instead, she wanted to take the
easier route and just apologize to readers the next day for publishing a false
story. Publishing this story could have
completely ruined the two teenagers’ lives.
A good journalist seeks the truth and reports it. Henry was persistent that the correct story
be published and wouldn’t give up without a fight… literally.
In the end, at the last minute, Alicia called off the paper,
updated the story to include the truth and printed it on the front page,
stating that the boys are innocent. It
turns out that the New York Sun is
the newspaper to break the story. Though
they might have lost money by wasting the papers first printed, I’m sure they
made up for them in sales by being the first to report the truth. When people know they can count on you to
report the facts, they are more likely to be loyal and buy your paper. Being such a high-profile case, I am sure this
story boosted the paper’s reputation.
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