The Paper
Summary
The Paper involves a reporter named Henry who will do anything to get a story in fast and right. His pregnant wife suffers from this obsession of his, for often he lets her down and cannot be there for her. Many ethical codes apply to this movie, most specifically the one that states we must seek the truth and report it.
The Society of Professional Journalists specifically says we must seek the truth and report it, in which we must "remember that neither speed nor format excuses inaccuracy." Also, we must provide context and take special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story" ("Society of Professional Journalists").
In this movie, the wrong story ends up being run, which is clearly an ethical violation for journalists. The original story stated that two African American boys were guilty of murdering someone. The fact of the matter is though, they weren't actually guilty.
Harry finds out that they weren't guilty from a police officer whose conscience starts to get to him in the bathroom with Harry and his friend reporter. Harry rushes around town all night to try and get this quote from the officer, however, when he returns, he is too late. His boss, Alicia, has already agreed to publish the original, incorrect story, and it is too late to change it with the correct one.
A good friend of Henry, Michael McDougal, expresses his "No, we're not. We run stupid headlines because we think they're funny. We run mailings on the front page because we got good art. And I spend three weeks bitching about my car because it sells papers. But at least it's the truth. As far as I can remember we never ever, ever knowingly got a story wrong, until tonight."
This clearly describes how one can go wrong when trying to follow the ethical code of seeking the truth and reporting it. Time should not be a factor, and they should have waited for the truthful, accurate story and publish that even if it meant publishing it one day later.
The Society of Professional Journalists clearly states that we must "consider the long-term implications of the extended reach and performance of publication, and provide updated and more complete information as appropriate" ("Society of Professional Journalists").
Alicia's mistake here was that she did not at first consider the long-term results of this publication. People would all think the two boys accused actually committed the crime, and this would ultimately end up hurting the two boys, one who actually has a football scholarship.
All in all, the best way to handle this situation is to wait for all the factual information to come in and publish the story then. That way, the story is correct and the best it can be as well as following the Society of Professional Journalist's ethical guidelines.
Works Cited
"Quotes." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
"Society of Professional JournalistsImproving and Protecting Journalism since 1909." SPJ Code of Ethics. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
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