Journalism and Ethics: What We're Taking for Granted in America

Julia Gogol
jg152015@ohio.edu

When do we as journalists cross the line?  What news story is so important, it's worth risking our entire careers for?  We have a responsibility to give the facts -- the unbiased, cold, hard facts.  But in today's world full of "fake news" and tweeting presidents, the public is forced to ask, what has journalism become, and where is it going?

Merriam-Webster defines journalism as "the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media."  Ironically, it also defines journalism as "writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest."

Journalism isn't meant to appeal to the public.  We need to give the truth, and nothing more.  Don't you find your news on a certain channel or tune into a certain radio station because you know you'll get the facts spun the way you want to hear?

According to CBS News, Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, said on CBSN that trust in the media has declined because "people are looking for objectivity and seeing opinions, and on social and search, they're seeing such of a difference of opinion that they can't get [anything] fact-based." He also said that "people are living in their own sort of thought bubble" and are biased based on their party affiliation.

Journalism is vital in any society, but it's the way in which it is reported that makes the difference between ethical and unethical journalism.  Let's take a look at the front pages of six different Chinese newspapers on the day Xi Jinping was again elected as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party:

Courtesy of Quartz

Seems a little strange, doesn't it?  In America, we'd be quick to call this plagiarism and deceitful - among other unappealing things - but in China this is expected for their media.  We take for granted our free press, and instead call our newspapers things like, oh let's just say, the "enemy of the people," for example.

We as a nation need to stop blaming journalists for giving us the news we don't want to hear.  The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics outlines four main requirements to being ethical: seek the truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent.  If journalists are following these guidelines, there's no reason for the distrust that has been such an issue recently in our society. 

According to a study performed by the Pew Research Center, "Only about two-in-ten Americans (22%) trust the information they get from local news organizations a lot, whether online or offline, and 18% say the same of national organizations."

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson says, "Knowing the consequences [his] colleagues and [he] would face if [they] fabricated a story, [he] find[s] such polls baffling and alarming. It is tempting to quibble with the methodology or even to despair of those who don’t understand how we work. But it feels more important to examine how we became so vulnerable to the 'fake news' charge."

Journalists center their whole careers around being honest and ethical and reporting the facts to the public, and we'll continue finding the facts as long as we have a medium on which to do it.  So while "fake news" may be overtaking our Twitter feeds, just remember -- at least we live in a society where we can have that option and voice our distrust.