Allison Cook
ac830913@ohio.edu
Warning: This article
contains a photo at the end that can be seen as graphic.
When having a discussion with my Ethics class
about what pushes a journalist to be unethical, many of the groups reasons
related to the journalist's personal interests, most commonly relating back to
money. Examples included: rushing to get an article done in time, making the
story more exciting so the journalist would get more clicks or views, bias
toward one side to attract a certain audience and trying to make a story out of
nothing. A lot of these unethical decisions come from the journalist's pressure
to keep his/her job and get paid.
According to Moral Reasoning for
Journalists by Steven Knowlton and Bill Reader, ethical egoism
is defined as a way of thinking that reflects the idea that "all of us
are, eventually, concerned only with our own well-being," or acting
"upon that choice that will produce the greatest good for me."
The ideas of what make journalists unethical in
my class seems to echo the same ideas that I hear from many of my relatives,
friends, co-workers, and even other scholars and journalists themselves.
In Malcolm Harris's article 'Unethical journalism can make
Ferguson more dangerous,' Harris talks about how by taking photos of
the Ferguson curfew violators put them in danger.
Harris mentioned in his article that, through
social media, he saw fellow journalists showing very little regard to
"the well-being of their subjects, repeatedly putting them at further risk
of harm" by telling the media, and therefore the police, exactly where the
violators were at that very moment.
Harris attributes this unethical behavior to the
environment where the correct picture or post can gain a journalist thousands
of followers on Twitter and national profile. Harris noted in his
article, "Journalists are supposed to care about people's safety as
well as the quality of their stories and the number of followers on Twitter
they gain."
Jenny Marc reports similar
ethical problems in "Journalists reposting on the refugee crisis are acting
unethically. I've seen it first hand in Calais." Marc talks about
her time in Calais, France and her experiences with the refugees and
filming.
Marc makes a point in her
article to emphasize the time she takes to gain the subject's trust
and consent before pointing a lens in his/her face. Why many of
the subjects turned down her request to film them for her stories did not come
clear until she began asking them. She found, "that the reason was part of
the story too." The subjects feared harming the family and friends that
had been left behind.
Unfortunately, Marc notes that
she saw and heard from many refugees and volunteers, that several fellow
journalists were filming whatever they wanted or needed
for their stories. Marc finished her article with, "I
worry that some of us are forgetting to employ the most basic and
human practices of all" to stop, to ask and to listen."
In both of these cases, one could say that these
journalists were working and acting for their own personal gains, whether it be
to gain likes or to please an editor. But maybe there is another side
to this. Maybe journalists are doing what they know how to do best: get the
facts and the story to those of us in the nation that can't be there to witness
the tragedy ourselves.
Knowlton and Reader talk in their book about the
idea that deep down people (and animals) want to keep their society
functioning. The example Knowlton and Reader use is with bees. A bee will
return to the hive to tell her bee co-workers that there is a good patch of
flowers and she will then give them directions on how to get to the flowers. If
she "were to transmit false information and thus send the other bees off
in the wrong direction, the whole hive would suffer."
In other words, while there are better ways to
obtain and send the information out, in the moment the journalists may be just
reporting what they can and have to get the true information to the readers.
Take the 'Falling Man,' a photo of a man falling from one of the Twin Towers on
9/11, for example.
In 'The
Falling Man: An Interview with Henry Singer' by Adam Harrison Levy,
Levy and Singer talk about the photo itself (and other 9/11 photos) as well as
the ethical dilemma with photos.
Singer makes the point that the image serves as
a representation to the audience of the true horror of the day. He also
mentions that the victims who chose to jump from the towers "weren't
acknowledged. And there is nothing worse (than) not being acknowledged."
These people existed. These people were a part of families who mourned their
loss in the days following. Pictures like The Falling Man are proof that the
jumpers were there and are victims of the tragedy too.
Levy asked Singer, "Should there be a moral
or an aesthetic limit to images of atrocity?" Singer agreed that there
should be, but that each person draws the line of what's okay to publish at a
different place.
I think, overall, The Falling Man is a photo
that was needed in the news of the tragedy. Yes, some say it
was gruesome and even unethical to shoot a photo of a man dying, but
in this case it was a part of the attack. It was a point that needed to be
acknowledged so that the public could move forward in their response to the
attacks.
 |
| Photo Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew "The Falling Man" |
This last point comes back to the idea of the
hive being able to thrive because the truth of the information was given. As
for Calais and Ferguson, there were better, more ethical ways that could
produce the same, or at least similar responses. In the case of Ferguson,
Harris suggested that the journalist take timing into consideration: publishing
the details or photos after a small delay is good enough for the readers and
has no use for the police. According to Harris, "taking time to think
about consequences for your subjects isn't an abdication of your duties as a
journalist; it's a vital part of fulfilling them."
No comments:
Post a Comment