What is the price of unified ethics? Identity.

Tess Stevens

TS075411@ohio.edu

12/2/14

PBS.org's article entitled, "Why New Journalism Ethics Have to be Public, Not Personal" attaches the idea of unified ethics to the back of journalism. In the social media age it is evident that all of our business is, or can be public at all times. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and more have enabled us to stay engaged with each other, the world and the news cycle more often than ever before. The double edged sword that is social media is showing its sharp side as ethicists all over are playing the guessing game regarding what is public and private. Journalism's impact on the world is bigger than ever, due to the sheer amount of space the internet has opened up for all walks of the journalism community. 

The argument championed by author Stephen J.A. Ward is that journalism ethics do not belong to the journalist. They belong to the public. And this argument is more apt than ever as social media has catapulted the average journalist to greater heights than ever imagined. Brian Stelter of the New York Times has 251K followers on Twitter. The LA Times twitter account has 1.14 Million followers and an international following is made possible as well. Social media brings journalism closer to the people, and therefore; the ethics come closer too. 

Ward puts together a few key points to take away from the article, they are as follows as the "Media Needs" of the consumer/citizen:

 Informational Needs: Citizens cannot be vigilant and informed without access to a rich     information soup of facts and reports about their world. 

Explanatory Needs: Citizens need more than facts. They need context and casual explanations for properly understanding news and events. 

Perspectival Enrichment Needs: Citizens need informed commentary, criticism, and multiple points of view on the information they obtain, and on the state of their society. 

Advocational and Reform Needs: Citizens should be free to go beyond commentary to use media to advocate for causes, push for reforms or hear the positions of advocates. 

Dialogic Needs: Citizens should have the opportunity to be part of reasonable and informed dialogue on common concerns and not be subject to disrespectful attacks.

These "demands" or "points of need" seem a hair idealistic in nature, but provide a reasonable blueprint for public ethics in regards to the digital age. Understanding the scope of access to information coupled with the need for good storytelling in conjunction with truth and advocacy is an essential thing to becoming a good journalist. 

Ward goes on to explain that journalists have no special authority to "announce" what values they honor, but they must show their values as they are grounded in the needs listed above, based on a code of ethics tailored to cater to the public. 

His most bold statement in the article is without question, "Subjectivism can damage free journalism. If citizens are told by journalists that they make up their own ethics, then citizens can conclude that tougher press laws are needed. Self regulation does not mean that each journalist regulates their own conduct." 

An evident example of deviating from expected ethics is the controversial Stephen Glass, who fabricated stories, times, dates, people and pretty much anything he could come up with in order to shortcut the process. People like that are exceptions to my statements below. 

Where I deviate from Ward, I believe that each journalist should have their own code of ethics under the guise of widely accepted ethics in a greater sense. If everyone keeps in mind the needs listed above, and crafts their own set of beliefs out of them then we get a wider range of ideas, and approaches to writing, story telling, and ultimately reporting. This creates a diversified community of journalists as opposed to a group of singular minded drones who adhere exclusively to codes that may be outdated in the next 10 years due to the flow of technology. Ward is trying to keep up with the times, but ultimately dates himself by putting such strict parameters on the needs of the people, and the journalists. If as journalists we don't have our own identity, our own code, personalized and tailored to each job and situation than what are we? 

Unoriginal copies. Carbon copies. Ethics are something that appears to be concrete, but everything has gray matter. Lines get blurred, and without those stories that lean one way or the other we wouldn't have any examples to learn from. We wouldn't have mistakes and we wouldn't have greatness. We'd just have...copies. Endless amounts of copies addressing Ward's "needs of the people." Which may be morally and ethically on the up and up, but don't address the stories that require any sort of decision making whatsoever. The times when journalists have to show their stripes and truly act as their own ethical agent are the times when Pulitzers and Emmys are won, when impact is made, and without our own unique compass guiding us mediocrity would reign and what we now understand as style and skill, great story tellers and not so great ones would all blur into one gray copy, and that's not what makes journalism great. Diversity of ideas, different backgrounds and skills learned, or inherited make journalism great, not an overarching one-size fits all ethical wet blanket. 

The article written by Stephen J. A. Ward can be accessed here.