David Haddad
dh719113@ohio.edu
When I came to the famed Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of
Journalism just a young lad, I had dreams of becoming the
next Walter Cronkite. My dreams quickly faded as I watched my faith in
Journalism as a whole die through several weed-out classes and a strict diet of
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
In these classes, we took a look at many aspects of the
journalism: the future, the job prospects, the legal side, and most recently,
the standards and codes of ethics. When I was reading over the
SPJ and RTDNA
codes of ethics, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy. In the present era of
click-bait and “report first, ask questions later” journalism, the codes read
more like a satirical bit from The Onion than
an actual moral manifesto.
To me, there is no question that the ethics of the media have been
slowly dying over the past few decades. The reason for this is twofold. First,
the dawn of 24-hour news stations has not only created a need to fill time
slots with complete fluff pieces and partisan news analysis, but the
competition to break stories forces many outlets to reports conjectures before
gathering all of the facts of a groundbreaking story. Take, for example, the shooting
of 70 people at a summer camp in Norway in 2011. When news of this horrible
attack broke, many American news stations initially began throwing around the
names of any Muslim group that could potentially be responsible for terror.
After a few hours of guessing, it was revealed that the actual culprit was
Anders Behring Breivik, a domestic terrorist, and anti-Islam right wing
extremist.
The second reason for this moral depletion is the decline in print
media at the hands of digital media and the over-saturation in the market. The
consequence of these phenomena is strong competition for clicks and readership.
This competition leads to sensationalized stories that damage reputations and
skew the facts, click-bait that numbs the minds of the public, and promotes a
guilty-until-proven-innocent environment. The almighty dollar has eclipsed the
truth in the era of New Journalism.
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| Courtesy of nymag.com |
I believe journalism is one of the most necessary industries on
Earth. Reporters have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the public
informed, many times doing a great job keeping the government in check (see:
Pentagon Papers, Watergate scandal, and David Graham Phillips’
The Treason of the Senate). However, I
think too much of the modern media’s attention is put toward pushing agendas
and catching politicians sleeping around.
It is for these reasons that I decided to take the opposite career
path of journalism: Public Relations. It is the job of a good PR agent to
mitigate any negative damage done to his or her clients by over-zealous
reporters. The need for good publicists is skyrocketing as media has become so
all encompassing and, in many arenas, unethical. The media is a watch-dog for
the government, big business, and any powers that be, but in a generation of
over-saturation, partisan news, and irresponsible reporting, sometimes a
watch-dog needs its own watch-dog.
I found your blog really interesting, because it has always been my dream to become a journalist in some capacity. I love writing; I love the news, and I share your belief that journalism is one of the most important industries in the world. I found it interesting that you have chosen to pursue a career in public relations instead, because I have considered going that route as well. In the end, though, I think it is important for those who are interested in journalism, who are talented writers and news reporters, and who want to report the news in an ethical way to pursue their dream of becoming journalists. We need more journalists like that, so while I understand why you decided not to go into journalism, I hope more people like you decide they want to report the news in an ethical manner. - Isabella Andersen kb244809@ohio.edu
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