Teaching Notes
Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
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
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.
18 comments:
I would like to work on the Koran-burning media coverage case, because it has so many layers of ethical issues.
I like this case because its issues are not only journalistic and ethical issues, it's also a reflection of America.
Some of the issues include the obvious issue being disputed within the story; people's right to freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. Other issues include, as journalists we need to decide what is news-worthy. It's our job to sift through content and separate relevant and important news, from just plain nonsense. By giving people like this an audience, are we perpetuating the problem?
Also, by covering hateful behavior like this so intensely, what kind of message are we sending to other countries, the Middle East in particular? If we're giving this Pastor such attention, attention to the point that were giving him temporary celebrity status, we are essentially glorifying him, which I don't think is right.
I would also like to work on the Koran case because I find that there are a lot of ethical questions raised by it.
Among them are issues of First Amendment rights, stereotyping all Muslims as terrorists, journalists as gate-keepers, manipulation of the public through biased media coverage, and what content media should give attention to.
If it had been someone who wanted to burn the Christian Bible or Tanakhs(?) would it have a) gotten the same attention and b) gained support from individuals all across the country? It boils down to religious intolerance and it's not okay to burn others' religious texts and preach intolerance and the news media shouldn't give nutcases a platform with which to do so.
The case I would most like to work on for our group project is the Internet privacy article. The article talks about software that marketers can use in order to monitor people's habits while their online. As many of us have noticed, this is already happening with social media. If we search something on Google, it's very likely that there will be an advertisement for whatever we searched on the sidebar of our Facebook's home page. The main ethical issue in this case deals with people's privacy. I think this would be a useful case study for me because I am aspiring to become a media professional and may possibly run into this sort of dilemma.
The case I would most like to work on is the Internet privacy case. The lack of morality on the part of the advertisers raises many issues for consumers. The public's rights to privacy are being forgotten in the process of internet marketing. It is important to keep in mind the importance of individual privacy when making a decision regarding advertising.
I feel like this case would be interesting to work on because it is something that directly effects me as an avid internet user. It would be very useful to be informed enough about the ways products can be marketed using social media and the like. As a production major, it is important to know about the issues involved with marketing.
I would like to do the project on the article "Retargeting ads follow surfers to other sites". The article started off with a women named Julie who searched for a pair of shoes on zappos.com, and that pair of shoes showed up in ads on other sites for days. She said it was as if Zappos had unleashed a persistent salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer.
The main ethical issue is about peoples privacy. The thing that comes into question is whether your giving part of your rights up when using a commercially supported site and should expect to see ads geared towards you based off what you search on a specific site on that site. But when you search for something on one site and it follows you to others, that may be crossing the line. I'd love to break this down using one of the models we've learned in class in a video presentation.
As three people have already laid claim to the privacy case, and two to the Koran case, I'd suggest most of the rest of you turn your attention to the remaining cases. The fairest way to do this is to give dibs to those you state their preferences earliest.
“In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger” is what I would like to discuss for the Media Ethics project because of its relevance to me as a journalism major and the rest of my peers, its questionable ethics for giving bonuses to writers based on page views and whether or not it’s ethical to demand, even in jest, so much of this from new journalists already fried from working 10 hour days. These news cycles don’t have the same deadlines as news stories in print, and it’s sadly the reality of future journalists. Instead of getting laid off, many journalists, especially Politico reporters, just quit to start anew which is bothersome to me.
I don’t know if I see every ethical problem in this article, but it makes me question today’s news quality over performance because this happens after graduation.
My other problem with this article is that the need for journalists is real and great; however I think these new journalists are being treated unfairly because they’re now expected to compete against each other and their rival publications more so than seeking the truth and reporting it. How did page views and winning game prizes become more important than the article itself? It seems reading these company e-mails is more demanding than actually working as a journalist.
My second choice would be “The Chilean Mine Rescue, Hollywood Version” because I see more unethical exploitation issues rather than seeing this as an honest way of producing newsworthy survivor stories.
I would like to work on the The Chilean Mine Rescue, Hollywood Version case.
Some of the ethical issues involved with this case are the intentions of the Hollywood producers and writers who take on these stories. What is the right story for Hollywood to take on? Do these writers and producers care to accurately depict stories like that of the Chilean miners? When is too soon? And most importantly, should the public depend on Hollywood rather than the news to learn about important historical events?
This is a topic that should be heavily questioned. I think this case would give me the chance to discover whether or not there is an ethical process in deciding what to make a Hollywood film.
I would like to work on the burning of the Koran case as well. I believe there are a multitude of ethical issues within this case. The two main issues for me are the platform our media created for such insanity and then of course, the stereotype of Muslims and the hatred for a specific religion and the generalizations attached. Other than those two issues, there is also the idea of the freedoms of speech and religion and the context in which these freedoms lie. Is it ethically sound to burn another’s religious text under the freedom of speech? And/or religion?
I would like to concentrate on the case regarding Converse and their financial support of a recording studio. The main issue that presents itself is that a well-recognized shoe corporation is holding the marionette strings to what should be a separate industry. Because amateur bands seek a "big brother" to give a push into fame, the rock-music culture is seeing the convergence as a positive thing. A main issue I want to address is the impact music has on advertisement and major corporations seeking to appeal to a certain culture. Another is to acknowledge the vulnerability that exists in consumers, particularly these amateur musicians. What exactly is the relationship between the two? Who is being manipulated?
I would like to cover the Converse branding case, where Converse is opening up a new recording studio and allowing new bands to record for free. This brings up a lot of issues on the relationship with entertainment and advertising. In the article from the packet, young artists are compared to artists of the Renaissance who needed rich corporations to fund their artwork. This is the modern day situation, where artists use large corporations to help them get to their big break, but is using young artists to sell a product, ethical? In this case, where converse sneakers are part of a uniform for many iconic musicians, will future ones be wearing them because converse is their sponsor? or because they want to?, and how will we, innocent viewers and consumers, detect the reality of it; especially since we have such a trust in musicians.
Honestly,there were over four case studies that really stuck out to me, any of which I would be more than happy with doing.These include the band branding, the mine disaster becoming a Hollywood movie,and the Internet privacy article. However, I think I am most interested in the privacy article. I stumbled upon another article about it and it was an extremely scary moment in my life, knowing that whatever we Google will never, ever be private. I guess we should never have thought that this wouldn't happen anyway or was always in the making, but the fact that it is finally being revealed is insane. So, I feel that this case would be the best to conduct into a media ethics case. How could we ever believe anything we ever do is private anymore? It makes me feel like we have to be skeptical of everything, which is absolutely absurd. I think there are so many ethical issues with this particular case and it would be extremely interesting to research about it.
But! Since I did read Professor Good's comment, I suppose I would then fall to either the band branding or the mine disaster.
In going over the cases, I found the Chilean Mine Rescue, Hollywood Version case particularly interesting.
There are a number of ethical issues that can be addressed within the case. Firstly, how moral is it for directors, producers, actors, etc. to take on parts in films or shows about real-life tragedies or news topics. Also, are the depictions of the people involved accurate and truthful? How far does artistic merit go? Additionally, is it ethical to make the news entertainment?
I'd may like to work on this case, because today, the news is almost solely entertainment-oriented. Its tragic, and full about questionable ethics that I'd like to learn more about.
The case I would like to do is the Converse case and how a lot of brands have become the new "record labels" for a lot of music today. The key ethical issues lie in the fact whether or not the company is in it to sell music, and not their product. There could be a chance of the label going out of business and then, the artist/group would be in a bad position. There is also the issue of advertising involved with music and how it affects the credibility of the company.
Converse case is full. Room for one more on Koran case, and two more on Chilean mine rescue. There are three spots open on Burnout and Retargeting ads, and two spots open on privacy. First come, first serve.
Here are the groups thus far:
Koran: Samantha, Liz, Kaleigh
Privacy: Etta, Brianna, Annie
Retargeted Ads: Kevin
Burnout: Jen
Chile: Pamela, Beth
Converse: Agraps (who is this?!), Bina, Zan, Michelle (group full)
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