Logan Barragan
lb589416@ohio.edu
We look to the media for entertainment, the daily forecast, updates on global pandemics and the latest on the fight for social justice. News outlets carry an incomprehensible level of responsibility to deliver information as quickly and efficiently as possible. One faulty source or offensive headline can be the defining factor for if society considers a journalist's work worthy of reading. More so, if the company they work for is legitimate.
Critics of journalism are often professors who quite literally make a living picking apart the issues of the media. Also, actual professionals in the industry who admit to there being many issues pertaining to the craft. The issue of ethical thinking, and its use in journalism today is that it is often overlooked. This can be because of money, meaning that news outlets will succumb to unethical journalism in an effort to achieve good ratings and in turn, build profit. There is also the issue of entertainment and legitimate news being seen as one in the same. This creates the problem for readers and viewers to know what information really is worthwhile to pay attention and consume.
The use of ethics in journalism could be considered by many to be a thing of the past, or perhaps something that has never existed. However, according to a study led by two professors of journalism, Lee Wilkins from the Missouri School of Journalism, and Renita Coleman, from the University of Texas-Austin School of Journalism, it is evident that is not the case. Their article, Ethical Journalism Is Not an Oxymoron, used the Defining Issues Test (DIT) on over 200 journalists with more than 10 years in the field to see if ethical reasoning is in fact an innate part of their job.
The DIT provides its responders with six ethical scenarios and asks them to make a choice on how they would handle said scenario, and to then explain the reasons for that choice. What they gathered from their research was that the majority of the journalists scored high on the written part of the exam, furthermore they explained why they use ethical thinking in their work. Throughout the duration of the test, they considered their community and the validity of the sources and subjects involved in the various scenarios. The article concluded that journalists, at their core, are quality ethical thinkers. The fact of the matter is they have to make decisions about how their report is written with the consideration of so many outlying factors. Factors the public has no idea about.
So how do we as readers and viewers, know if the journalism we are reading is being written with the use of ethical thinking? Relatively well known American newspaper companies, like The New York Times, has a section on their website titled, Ethical Journalism, A Handbook of Values and Practices For The News and Editorial Departments. This handbook is solely dedicated to the explanation of how they write their stories, and that they do so in the most impartial way possible.
An operative way for journalists to use ethical thinking in their work is the understanding an implementation of the Utilitarianism theory. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, those who believe in this theory do their best to increase the amount of good things in the world and decrease the amount of bad things, with the intent of creating the most good for the most amount of people. This mind set can be used by journalists when they approach an ethical issue. They solve the issue by deciding what outcome would be the best for the majority of the community.
As mentioned previously, there are so many unknown factors that go into the development of a news release, and in many cases those factors detract from the intended message. But what we can conclude is that journalists are indeed ethical thinkers who, for the most part, work to bring the most relevant of events and issues to the light for the public to be aware of.
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