The Balance of Seeking the Truth and Minimizing Harm

Kayla McLeod

kayre312@gmail.com

 

 

As technology and the media expands, the general public's access to the news becomes larger and larger. We went from waiting for the daily newspaper to being updated on twitter every twenty minutes. With this growing power that the media now holds comes responsibilities, and these responsibilities fall into journalists' hands. In order to uphold the true purpose of journalism (i.e. to inform), journalists are often expected to follow a set of guidelines.

 

Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) upholds a set of principles to serve as guidelines, not rules, for journalists. 

The most important thing to note when observing these principles, however, is the contrast between seeking out the truth and minimizing harm. This is something, as one can observe in our world of journalism today, that a lot of journalists struggle with. Sometimes, minimizing harm means not reporting the full truth, so these two principles seem to be contradictory. 

The best way to uphold both of these principles, as SPJ says, is to find an independent balance. Independence is a key word here, because ethics are not the same as morals. Morals are society based norms on what is right and wrong, while ethics are more individual. SPJ recommends that each individual journalist references the set of principles, however to not lose grip of their individual ethics and find their own balance between protecting and informing the public. 

These guidelines are set in particular because of the power journalism has over society. One good example, featured in a series of ethics case studies done by SPJ, is the sting operation that led to the suicide of Louis Conradt Jr. 

   Picture source: imdb.com

 

Journalists, in attempt to catch child predators, were collaborating with law enforcement to catch child predators online. However, many people considered that this might be a breach of ethics; collaborating with law enforcement and publicly humiliating these men on TV, even though their acts should be revealed. 

As part of a Dateline special, law enforcement and a camera crew showed up to Conradt's house after he had made conversation with someone who he though was an underage boy but never attempted to meet in person. They forcibly entered his house after no reply, and Conradt shot himself before police could issue their search warrant. 

So SPJ asks in this case study, "Is it ethically defensible to take part in the deceit that is a sting?"

 

However, regardless of the question, SPJ stands by the fact that these ethical decisions are up to the individual in order to uphold our First Amendment rights.