Ethics Schmethics

Posted by Cynical Sarah on October 24, 2006

I have a journalism degree, and one of the things they stressed in school was journalism ethics and how important it is to present a fair and balanced story no matter how you feel about it or what side you take. However, outside of a school setting that guideline is pretty much thrown out the window.

My very first job out of college was for a daily, small-town newspaper. You’d think they would be all about the fundamentals and getting great stories, but it turns out the newspaper business is all about money. Just like any other media, it’s all about what will bring in the ad revenues. So the paper was mostly about promoting the town and certain groups in the town to keep businessmen happy and paying for ads.

It’s quite disheartening when you come right out of school with your rose colored glasses on thinking that you’ll be providing a good service to the people. I did do some great stories, but it was almost daily that we’d get “requests” from the advertising section of the paper for stories we should do for the paper. Things like the Kiwanis Club activities, renovations at the YMCA, and more.

Not only were the stories slanted to favor the town and the businessmen most of the time, the whole paper was slanted to one political side. That’s one thing your average reader will learn fast when picking up a newspaper. No matter how much they proclaim to be fair and unbiased, newspapers and other media are definitely slanted to one political side or the other.

They may have to all run the same amount of ads for each side of a race, but that doesn’t mean their stories and reporting have to be fair and unbalanced despite what we’re taught in journalism school. Some are definitely democratic, and some are definitely republican.

Lately some media persons have been taking things even more to the extreme. Not only are they slanting their news to one side or another, but they’re also creating their own photos to fit their agenda.

There was report this past week of a Lebanese photographer who took a picture of Beirut after a bombing. Instead of selling the photo to the Reuters news service as is, he altered the photo first by adding in more smoke and making the damage look worse. While he claims it was an “accident” while he was just cleaning up the image before selling it, any fool can see all the smoke he added isn’t just an accident.

There have also been reports of photographers placing items in scenes and completely staging scenes to make them more dramatic for their photos. They’re doing things like placing teddy bears and other toys in rubble from a bombed out building to. There was also a woman who was used in several different locations as a “homeowner” standing in her doorway wailing because of the devastation.

As if war and devastation aren’t horrifying enough, the media has to take it up just that extra notch to get even more of a reaction from people.

The ethics we’re taught in school are taught for a reason. The media can have a huge influence over the general population. They’re relying on the television stations and newspapers to tell them what’s going on around the world. When those media personnel start throwing in their own slant on stories, their passing that slant on to the viewers or readers instead of providing them with an objective story and letting them come to their own conclusions.
When the media starts taking that one step further by fabricating photos and altering photos to suit their objecting, they’re basically lying to their public. They’re making up news and feeding it to a public that doesn’t know any better.

I’m not even sure how they can defend their actions. Could they be doing it because they don’t want the American people to become apathetic? If they are, it’s their own fault it’s reached that point. The news sources have hyped up so many things over the years that the public has learned to half tune out what’s going on.

Remember those killer bees that were going to take over the U.S. and kill hundreds of people? Or how about mad cow disease that was going to turn our brains to mush or that flesh eating bacteria? They’ve sensationalized so many stories in order to gain readers and viewers and sell more ads that they’ve lost the trust of the people. We’ve learned that not everything the media says is as bad as it seems. So now they’re going way over the top to just get a reaction from people.

It all comes down to the money. Money turned journalism from being about informing the public to being about feeding the public whatever it takes to sell ads and make money. And the scary thing is that they’re still a major influence on the general public because where else are they going to go to keep up with world news.

- Sarah L. Polson

Filed Under: Blog - Comments: Read the First Comment



top