The Paper

 Jacob Smith
js615311@ohio.edu

In the movie, The Paper, we not only get insight into how a newsroom operates but we also get to see the life of a journalist and how their personal life can affect their professional life. Henry’s life in particular helps to show the challenges a journalist must face while raising a family and facing the ethical issues we saw in the film.
  
Henry faces a situation where he could potentially accept a job at another newspaper called the Sentinel, this job could help him and his family out a lot. Henry; however, sees accepting this job as himself selling out and part of him really wants to stay at The New York Sun. The ethical issue comes into play when Henry is at his interview, after attempting to squeeze some leads out of the interviewer, he eventually sees one sitting on the interviewer’s desk. He is faced with the decision of stealing this potential lead or he can pretend he didn’t see it. This ethical issue deals with Henry’s integrity as a journalist. A journalist may only use private transmissions of other news organizations with their permission. Henry clearly didn’t ask to use to use the information he took, violating the ethics codes.
  
Another ethical issue in this movie is when Henry and Alicia are fighting over which headline to run. Henry, through further investigations, discovers that the boys accused of the crime in the story are actually innocent. Henry wants to stop the press and prevent The New York Sun from printing something they knew was a lie. Alicia sees all of that as a huge waste of money and would rather print the lie with a correction the following day. This incident deals with multiple ethical issues, public trust,  truth and credibility. Journalist first obligation is to the public, not to the money. Alicia is wrong for this reason, she is willing to print a lie to the public, risking their trust, all for saving money. Journalists must always seek the truth, I see Alicia as giving up on the truth in this case. Alicia chose a lie over the truth, violating the ethics codes. A journalist should always report anything that is known to be false, Alicia is choosing not to do that in this case as well. Alicia is also risking doing harm to the public, even though she is planing a reprint the next day, she is still risking those kid's reputations. Some people could still associate them with being guilty and it could have affected their case. All of Alicia’s decisions affected the credibility of the news paper.
  
Watching the movie, The Paper, you see many ethical issues play out as the film progresses. I’m sure you could find an example for every SPJ code in the book. Either way, this movie shows great insight into what an average journals faces trying to get ahead in the industry. As you climb the professional ladder it seems you face more and more ethical issues on a daily bases. Henry had his eye on the prize in order to raise a happy family and was determined to make it work. But as we saw this put him in the perfect position to fall for many of the temptations our ethics codes try to prevent.