Media Ethics
by Chelsea Moore
Ethics have become a huge issue in the media. It's nothing new. We've been taught over and over to not re-invent the wheel. I chose an ideal book to encourage just that. The book, Media Ethics: Issues and Cases addresses ethics on a case to case basis.
From chapter to chapter, Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins introduce a new issue, such as information ethics, advertising ethics, loyalty, etc., and then presents cases on each of the issue. I found the cases to be really interesting.
Some of you may have seen the picture of the mother and son falling from a burning building. It is a picture of a woman who is moments from death and a child that is only saved because he landed on top of his mother. The picture was plastered on the front page of the Boston Herald, despite the ethical reservations that the photographer, Stanley Forman, had. As a result, it received many awards. Among them, the photographer received the Pulitzer prize. Patterson and Wilkins tell the story and then ask the question: Must there be tragedy in order for someone else to succeed? In the text, they say that "more than half of all photos that have won the two major prizes in photojournalism have involved tragedy" (p. 116).
I had never thought of the coincidence of good journalism and tragedy. This particular case reminded me of the Murrah Building bombing picture of the fireman and the child, who turned out to be dead in the picture. This picture was posted all over the newspapers at the time. This book continues to address different ethical situations throughout. At the end of each case, it simply asks a question to begin discussion.
Since ethics are so important in media, presently and in the future, I think it would be beneficial for all journalism majors to be introduced to this book.
1 comment:
I read this book in my Journalism Ethics class here at OU and I found it very interesting. There were a lot of different ethics cases that were presented by the authors in an intriguing way. I remember this case because we discussed it in deep detail in class. Tragedy is something that is very sticky especially when it involves a child. I think the fact that this picture was plastered on the front page of newspapers was insenstitive.
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