Ethics and Journalism Today

 Julia Black

Juliablackjack@gmail.com

Over the past few years, there has been ongoing talk about how news outlets or "the media" are not to be trusted anymore because some journalists have been losing touch of their ethical roles of journalism. This is a very broad idea. To understand it slightly better, there are different areas one could visit to understand the entirety of the topic of Ethics in Journalism.

 

In Moral Reasoning for Journalists, authors Bill Reader and Steven Knowlton touched upon two different areas -- if we are diving deep into the whole concept of Ethics and its use -- which could explain why there is this idea of news outlets lacking credibility.

 

Reader and Knowlton mentions about how politics has had a major role in this tendency of not trusting the media and news outlets. If we think about the current POTUS and these past four years of him in the White House, one would need only to visit his Twitter account to find themselves presented with a very vocal overflow of hate towards the media.

The more articles showing the president in any negative way only fuel to more debate and anger from his part, constantly contradicting them but both mutually giving the other more platform. However, Trump has a whole team of people who make his image look good no matter what and his constant vocal hate toward news and the media keep feeding or selling this idea that one shouldn't trust the news.

The other area worth investigating is how new media, tabloids, digital media, etc. creates and share articles or specific information for the purpose of getting more recognition, money, and public attention overall. Here the concept of Good vs Bad or Right vs Wrong is at play.

In a New York Times article that talks about the new phenomena of "anti-maskers", author Charlie Warzel interviews Harvard doctor Ranu Dhillon about how the approach should be toward anti-mask people who fully believe that their concept of  "good" or "right" -- in this case: if masks should be worn/do they work -- is the only correct answer because they are fed all these polluted media articles.

Anti-vaccine supporters at California rally to reopen state. 

David McNew/Getty Images

Doctor Ranu Dhillon states "It's absolutely one way or absolutely the other way, when it should be shades of gray" when describing the problem to be due to a "lack of nuance" (2020). In other words, the need for ethics to take place is important when there are so many people fully taking in tabloid articles announcing masks don't need to be worn or advice from the President himself saying that chlorine could be digested to kill the virus.

This is where the Code of Ethics comes in. Journalists have to stick to our basic rule of reporting the truth to inform the public. Especially now. The world has been trying to recover from COVID-19 and with so much uncertainty all around the planet, our focus should be to get informed accurately and inform the public what they need to know during these complicated times without the distraction and wasted time some news networks are providing the public with unethical pieces of articles with information gathered from unreliable sources.

To emphasize, it is times like these we are currently living, when listening and trusting our news outlets and also not polluting the public with unreliable information is most important.