Kiah Easton
kiaheaston1999@gmail.com
Today, journalism is at a low point in terms of trust among its readers. With the popular phrase "the media" being blamed for much of the political climate today, journalists are pressed to improve the link between citizens that seems to have been broken. One thing that creates trust between journalists and their readers is ethical journalism, but what is ethical journalism and what does it really mean to be ethical?
Ethics is the ever-evolving study of what humans believe to be wrong and right. However, what is wrong and right depends on who you are asking and what they are basing it on. This idea is displayed in the article What is Ethics? from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, where people were asked their definition of ethics. "Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong," "Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs," "Being ethical is doing what the law requires," " Ethics consists of standards of behavior our society accepts."
When the branch of philosophy began to grow, built on the backs of Greek philosophers, it was heavily based on the use of reason. Although still described as the search for what is good, it wasn't what one might think when hearing the word "good". Ethics was initially a shift in the way people thought. If an answer was discovered through reason, intellect, and knowledge rather than instinct or intuition, it would have been considered ethical.
As the study of ethics developed it adapted to encompass more. As stated in Moral Reasoning For Journalists, "Ethics ask such questions as what is good? Is it the same for each of us? Is good synonymous with pleasure (as the hedonists believed) or, perhaps, with excellence (as Aristotle argued)? Is it immutable, or does it change from time to time, from place to place, and from person to person?"
An important distinction in ethics, and in journalism is the difference between being prudent and being ethical. Prudence encompasses decisions based on being careful and safe. Prudent decisions follow the rules set forward by society with little to no question. Ethics goes deeper to question what is right and wrong beyond what rules state or what society expects you to do. If your family was desperately in need of food but you had no money is it wrong to steal from a large wealthy grocery store? A prudent answer would most likely be to not steal because the laws society has "agreed on" prohibit that action. An ethical answer would analyze whether or not the rule is good in this situation. The family is starving and may die if the man does not steal the food, the grocery store will take a minimal financial loss. Regardless of what the rules are governing the situation, ethical thinking would most likely deduce that it would be good for the man to steal the food and feed his family because it creates more good than it does bad.
How does this play into the journalistic process? Why should we trust journalists who think ethically more? Because journalists are aggregators of information within society. Their function is to inform and protect the people they serve. Although many journalistic organizations have codes of ethics, journalists also need to be able to think for themselves in order to carry out their duties with ever ones best interests in mind. Whether it be respecting privacy versus exposing corruption or telling the facts in a way that is not misleading, journalists need to be able to think ethically to make the right decisions.
In our current atmosphere, much of content creation is fueled by revenue, which in certain cases has caused sensationalism, lying, and in general unethical journalism. Ethicality is the key to creating trust between journalists and the world and therefore it should be cultivated within more journalists and displayed to the public creating trust and restoring journalist's reputation.
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