Teaching Notes

You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Monday, October 6, 2008

Group Project

Please identify your group, the case the group will be analyzing, and what the group sees as the key ethical issue or issues in the case. If possible, also describe the approach -- that is, the model (Potter Box, Theory of Pluralistic Values, SPJ Code, etc.), principle, mode of reasoning -- you're planning to take to the case.

9 comments:

Doron Tyler Antrim said...

My group includes Alyssa DAngelo, Julie Anzovino, and Chelsea Clarke.

We will be analyzing the case entitled "CNN discovers downside of citizen journalism."

This is the key ethical issue in the case: Should CNN be promoting citizen reporting through iReport when there is a possibility that was is reported is untrue?

CNN's first responsibility is to the truth, and when they place journalism in the hands of ordinary citizens, they're gambling with their reputation, and risking harm to others.

However, giving citizens the opportunity to report has its rewards.

Therefore, CNN should ask themselves, is it worth the risk?

Our group is still debating the model to take to this case, but we're leaning towards the Potter Box.

NPgal said...

Group members are Zuri, Jess, Josh, Brianna and myself.

The main issue that we will be focusing on is the press secretary in the Whitehouse, mainly those that were apart of the Bush Administration.

We will focus on three main areas: oil, september 11th, and weapons of mass destruction. We're going to analyze the press releases,and what the public was told versus what was actually being done. We also want to look at the press secretary's role and their obligations to their bosses and to the public.

What are the moral and technical obligation of the press secretary?

We might also focus on how much the public should know. Does the public have a right to know everything?

We plan on using the potter box to analyze all of our information in the three focus areas (oil, 9/11, WMDs)

Howie Good said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Howie Good said...

My advice is to focus your main analysis narrowly -- on a specific instance that symbolizes a particular category of ethical issues or problems. For example, the PR group might want to select just one of the three cases now listed -- WMDs, say -- and make pointed reference to the other two. Remember, you're producing a five-minute or so video. Three cases might prove simply too much for the video to contain.

Gina Marinelli said...

Katrina Kieltyka, Brittany O'Hara, Jovan Layne, and I will be working on the case study presented in "Newspaper's ruse raises issues of journalistic ethics." Specifically we will ask whether journalists should use deceptive practices to get information. We will also ask if entrapment is ethical to get a story. We will analysis the case study using Kant's Categorical Imperative in order to see if the ends justify the means. For example, is the practice of entrapment ethical if it is used to expose a criminal action or injustice, rather than exposing a public figure's personal life? We will also use to Potter Box, Utilitarianism and other approaches to explore this topic.

Jesse Ordansky said...

I am in a group with Stephanie, Emma, and Vanessa.We will be analyzing the media coverage of the "Virginia Tech Massacre."

The ethical issue in this case is New Vs Exploitation. What content is newsworthy against what content is an exploitation of audience, victims, and families in attempt to get ratings.

We plan on using the concept of Utilitarianism and/or the SPJ Code of Ethics to analyze this case's ethical implications.

Nicole said...

My group includes Chris, Terra, and Lauren. We are looking at the case that involves two young girls who were sexually abused and their information was released to the public. The key issue we saw was that when it comes to sexual abuse cases, victims names are never released, but sometimes it isn't found out until after the names are released that sexual abuse played a role. We think that more attention must be paid and background should be observed before releasing any information. Our group still isn't sure on what model they're going to be use, but we're considering the Potter Box right now.

LIVE, LIFE, LOVE said...

My group includes myself, Nick, Joe, and Zorana.

We will be focusing on the article titled "National study shows smoking in films influences teens". The group sees the main issue of the case being:

Public health vs. Free speech

The problem is that there have been many studies done on how films influence teen smoking. Activist groups see films that contain smoking as influential and these activist groups believe that any movie that contains smoking be rated R. But the question is are these rating limiting free speech on behalf of the makers of the movie, or the script writer.

My group has come to the consensus that this is a public relations case, so we are going to use the PR code of ethics as one of our tools. We are also going to use other ethical principles and decision making models but have not come to a group decision on which ones yet. Maybe the potter box or another model that may come up before the project is due.

LIVE, LIFE, LOVE said...

My group includes myself, Nick, Joe, and Zorana.

We will be focusing on the article titled "National study shows smoking in films influences teens". The group sees the main issue of the case being:

Public health vs. Free speech

The problem is that there have been many studies done on how films influence teen smoking. Activist groups see films that contain smoking as influential and these activist groups believe that any movie that contains smoking be rated R. But the question is are these rating limiting free speech on behalf of the makers of the movie, or the script writer.

My group has come to the consensus that this is a public relations case, so we are going to use the PR code of ethics as one of our tools. We are also going to use other ethical principles and decision making models but have not come to a group decision on which ones yet. Maybe the potter box or another model that may come up before the project is due.

Is Media Ethics Education DOA?

It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University in late 2006.

Students had been given 48 hours to sign onto a Columbia Web site to take the final exam in a required course called “Critical Issues in Journalism.” They then had 90 minutes to answer two essay questions.

The students were warned to not discuss the questions with each other, but apparently they did. As the headline over a story reporting the scandal put it, “Ivy J-Schoolers Fail Ethics, Ace Irony.”

No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.

There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.

A Question for Socrates


The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.


Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
New York owned by Gannett Co., Inc. The woman in charge of organizing the workshop had supplied us with several case studies to examine. I remember one dealt with a classic conflict of interest, a copy editor who moonlighted at a local radio station.

But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.

I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?

Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories

A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”

I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.

Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.

“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.

Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”

But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.

When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.

Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.

Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.

Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.