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.
21 comments:
Perhaps this won't prove the case for everyone, but, in my own experiences, I believe I've been exposed to rather comparable encouragement toward both technical and moral excellence. In all fairness, this comes amid several semesters of journalism curriculum, over which I've been exposed to the likes of libel and defamation in news reporting. Sure, a news piece can (technically) be expertly-written and bring a publication loads of publicity, but is it (morally) fitting to publish the story if it elicits harm upon one of its subjects?
To be fair, I think technical excellence is stressed a great deal in education, too. After all, we're basically trained as machines in secondary school. Here, it's all a memorization game, with numbers, formulas, facts, names, dates, events and so on thrown about, and, if you dare speak your mind on a paper, you'll perhaps find red ink doused all over your paper. I think this rather mechanical, technical way of obtaining success extends beyond school and into later life. It encourages a mindset of "play it safe and follow the rules, and you'll be just fine." It does not, however, necessarily inspire someone to do what's morally "right."
As a journalist (though, in all fairness, this sentiment extends to most professions), I think a precise balance of both technical and moral excellence is ideal. Yes, one needs to abide by A.P. style, obtain strong sources, master a solid, engaging writing style and do all else that is "technically" required. Yet, one can abide by all of these "technical" elements and still become the next Stephen Glass. In journalism, one must have a decent moral backbone, too. For instance, a journalist may well come upon a figure not unlike Teresa Perrone, who tests the journalist's sense of what is "morally" appropriate when everything technical perhaps seems just fine (even though, in actuality, Meg Carter's efforts were rather dreadful all-around). It is then that a journalist's character and his or her beliefs on "excellence" are revealed.
I believe there is a contrast in society and within oneself about which is valued more, moral or technical excellence. I feel as if the student who cheats on exams, and copies homework, who ends up with a better grade than the student who studies and does his own work, is rewarded with the higher grade. This reward encourages them that it is more important to possess technical excellence, and moral excellence is not as important. These people are rewarded, and many of them don’t suffer the consequences.
“Good work,” is a phrase that is tossed around, and can mean many things. Good work can mean you did the right thing for society, or good work can mean you did the right thing for yourself. Scoring high on a test can be considered good work, even if you copied the person next to you entirely. As long as you don’t get caught, this is positively reinforced. Steven Glass, was “patted on the back” after all of his successes, and praised. It was this appraisal that led him to continue to possess technical excellence, and ignore moral excellence. It can also be noted, that it was his ignoring of moral excellence that led to his downfall.
In my experience at school, I always tried to do what is right from a moral standpoint. I employ these values that were set by my parents at a very young age. Even though in society I may not be rewarded, I am at peace within myself because I know I did the right thing. I feel as if moral excellence is more important to me than technical excellence, because of my upbringing. My parents instilled it in me that “winners never cheat, and cheaters never win.” Therefore, even if I don’t possess technical excellence, my moral excellence keeps me satisfied.
^ Evan Brieff
Good work requires attention to both technical and moral excellence. Bad work clearly requires the opposite of these. The definition in our text for good work states, “It is work that is both excellent in quality and socially responsible, work that is good in two senses of the word.” It is possible to do work that may be technically excellent while it is not morally excellent. You can also do work while following moral excellence which may not be your best work technically. While I go through my days in school and at work I feel as though I am giving my attention mostly to the technical part. However, I don’t believe one is more important than the other, at least not personally, and I think that they come as a package deal when it comes to journalism.
I wouldn’t say that I am an unethical person with no moral excellence, but I do think that when it comes down to it I would much rather get the job done well and on time then concentrate mostly on moral excellence and then do a half-assed job with the technical aspect. I do think that when it comes to education, technical excellence is stressed much more than moral excellence. That is the way we have learned; we’ve always been taught to do the right thing, don’t lie, blah blah blah. It is very rare that we are taught how to actually possess morals and express them in our everyday lives.
I think it is very important to achieve both technical and moral excellence throughout our daily routines, whether it is at work or in school. However, if we can be successful technically while achieving moral excellence at the same time then we’d be perfect and there would be no discussion here. It is a lot easier said than done.
I believe that in college, moral excellence is encouraged over technical excellence. Yes, we often have proper technical format repeatedly cemented into our brains; however it is only to ensure that there is no immoral work, for example: plagiarism involved. If a student writes a fantastic paper, yes it will be rewarded, but if they are found to have even plagiarized part of the paper, the student could face being expelled.
The work place does not stress moral excellence as much as an educational institution. The business world is all about making money, and if that can be done while not breaking the law, then many bosses will be extremely happy with your work. I think our educational experience tries to teach us a moral code to live by, but it is up to the individual to implement that code when they step out into the "real world."
Furthermore, technical excellence and moral excellence go hand in hand. In other words, you can't have one without the other. For example, if you have a morally sound story but no evidence to back it up you can't print it. In opposition, if you have a great story but run the risk of ruining an innocent persons life, you shouldn't run the story either. The technical codes are created to enforce the moral codes, not to help people get around them.
Personally, I try my best to make sure I achieve both technical and moral excellence; however at the end of the day I would have to choose the moral route. For example, I never would have published an article about Peronne's abortion. At the end of the day somethings are more important than personal gains in the work place, and an entertaining story for the masses.
In my experience, I've seen almost an equal stress on morality and technicality. I think in terms of schooling, both are very much valued and in work, which is more important is somewhat dependent on the particular job.
I think in school it's sometimes a difficult task to determine which of the two hold more importance. The rules of plagiarism are written on every syllabus we receive and it is emphasized how it is not tolerated and can result in expulsion. However, we do not receive grades based on moral value, but rather on the level of technicality. The pressure put on students to achieve a certain technical standard can prompt them to forget their moral obligations. While sometimes students are caught and punished, often times they are not. They successfully cheat, pay someone to write their paper etc., and receive good grades because the technicality is there. This does not exactly encourage students to complete work in a moral manner.
When it comes to work, again both technicality and morality are present and have a place, but the levels of importance differ for professions. For example, while a journalist definitely needs to have the technical skills to write a well organized and written article, they have a big moral obligation that I think may overtake the technical aspect. A doctor, however, while there are obvious moral issues, needs to pay extreme attention to technicality to provide the best care for a patient.
I think most people in our society know that ideally morality would be the most important factor, but that in fact it seems technicality usually takes precedence. Living in such a stressful, high pressure and money centered society where everyone is trying to climb the social ladder, people can sometimes lose sight of their moral values.
I'm not sure if I could choose one as being most important personally, but I suppose the importance might change based on the situation or context. I think everyone needs to strive for the appropriate balance of the two in order to do their best or do "good work."
In my own experience in work and at school moral excellence tends to receive more attention. For example, all professors hold their students to some type of responsibility inside their class. There are consequences for missing too many classes, tardiness, handing in late work, and the "big one," plagiarism. In work, as I have only worked in food service, moral standards are the most important because you are interacting with people.
In class, it is important to understand technical excellence, however, I have noticed that in understanding it, one must hold his or herself to a moral standard of responsibility.
Therefore, although separate, the two cases work with each other to obtain the idea of "good work."
The relative importance of these two dimensions are that in order to have one, there must be a sense of the other. With technical excellence, an understanding of morals must be derived and utilized to keep a sense of honesty and integrity for the purpose of credibility. With moral excellence, one must use a technical sense to be the most correct within a circumstance.
I do not believe that one is more important that the other because each is dependent on separate circumstances. The extent of which a scientist uses technical excellence compared to a journalist is completely separate and irrelevant to one another. The importance of the dimension of good work is based upon the tools needed to complete the task.
There are very few times where I wouldn’t put both technical excellence and moral excellence hand in hand. Perhaps it was how I was taught in school, but it just seems right. There is always going to be a specific way to do certain things. There will always be rules involved whether they are written or unwritten. There are also always ways of handling situations. Some people use the term “white lie.” I think that most people possess the skill to tell the difference between cutting a small corner and completely going about a situation in the wrong manner. To do “good work,” one must use both dimensions together so that each component can work with each other making the outcome “good work.”
In Journalism I feel that technical excellence is vital. It is important that Journalists follow guidelines so that they will not undermine their own credibility. Perfection shouldn’t be an option. Some of the issues faced in Journalism today, like the time constraints cause technical excellence to be nearly impossible. Everything stated and printed is examined under a microscope. People will always find flaws, so it is essential that journalists are careful when going about finding facts. As I previously stated technical excellence and moral excellence go hand in hand. Morality should almost always come just a bit before technical excellence. Doing what is right over what is easy, in my opinion always wins. If printing someone’s name in a story will cause harm to them, then its obvious that printing the name will most likely end up getting that journalist into trouble anyway. In this example, perhaps it is better to print a persons name only if it is important for the public to know about the information. Otherwise people should remain the right to have their names left out if they are willing to be an anonymous source. There is a consequence to every action and every decision. To ignore either component would be a mistake. Finding the right balance proves to be the most useful information to an individual caught between technical excellence and moral excellence.
From my own experiences, technical excellence is what was most important; at least when it came through my studies up through high school. Those that did great technically often got the higher grades. As long as you did the work then you would do well in school. Most of my classes hadn't really graded based on moral excellence, save for my English class as many of the English classes I have had tend to pressure thinking outside the box.
Having the technical side be more important only encourages students to have the logical answer rather than what would be most accepted depending on the society or culture. It deals more with those with intelligence rather than common sense of what's right and what's wrong.
I think that both are important but it also depends on the situation. Technical excellence is nice but in order to have new ideas out there, moral excellence is needed. In the end, both are rather important. Without one, I don't think that society could really function as much.
By far, in my experiences in work and school, technical excellence receives more attention than moral excellence. At the beginning of every semester I, along with my peers, receive the schools statement on their rules towards those whose work is done immorally such as plagiarizing. The rest of the year, however, is spent with teachers drilling the need and tools for us to achieve technical excellence in our academic work. Likewise, in work, technical excellence has always been expected and demanded of me rather than moral excellence.
In my opinion, in today’s society, technical excellence takes priority over moral excellence and that what is considered “good work” is work that has been done to pre-set standards rather than work that was done while following a person’s ethical and moral standards.
I believe that both moral and technical excellences are necessary for someone to lead a successful life. It is, however, important to make the case that the importance of these two dimensions is dependent on specific situations. Thus, in some situations, technical excellence trumps moral excellence and vice versa.
In my experiences in school, technical excellence gets the most attention. Yes every syllabus you will ever read says that plagiarism is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, but you will never be graded from a moral stand point. There will always be technicalities that professors look for in papers and projects that if not followed will result in bad grades. For those students who only care about the grades that they receive, may be more than willing to overlook the morality of how they got that grade as long as it is a good one.
In our text, "good work" means that it is both technically good and socially responsible. I feel that many times the socially responsible part of good work often gets overshadowed by the technical side of things.
Personally, I like to keep balanced the technical and moral stand points of work. I do my best while still remaining moral. As long as I do the right things morally, then the technicalities can be done in the right way as well.
In my own experience it appears that in a school environment technical excellence tends to be rewarded over moral excellence. It is drilled into a student's brain from day one that if they don't get an assignment done on time and in a proficient, formulaic and timely manner that they will fail the class. This also plays into the "society" discussion from last class. "Society" tells us that if we fail a class, our GPA will go down. Because of this we will be less attractive to our peers who graduate and therefore we will not succeed in life. This "societal" pressure scares us into doing an assignment regardless of how we do it.
Moral excellence is sometimes undervalued in many aspects of "society" including the educational system that students are placed in. A teacher does not grade students on their moral excellence, they grade them on their technical excellence. A student can cheat, lie, steal and still get an A in a class where as student who does all of their work properly but maybe fails at some of the minor technicalities can be stuck with a lower grade.
"Good work" in many settings is judged solely on technical excellence, meaning the realitive importance of the two dimensions of the word is skewed. A teacher can tell a student who cheated and got an A+ that they did "good work" when in reality that is the exact opposite case. Moral excellence is imperative to "good work," or at the very least should be. If someone is able to balance technical and moral excellence in their work (as a journalist should) their work will be as it should be when compared to the guidelines a profession such as journalism adheres to.
I'd of course love to say that technical and moral excellence is always the same for me and everyone around me. But, unfortunately I think that, like most things, the degree to which excellence is favored depends on the situation someone is in. Going back to the school example - many times a student is forced to take a class that they may not have a drive to be in and their moral excellence in work might falter. If someone has to write a 30 page paper on the importance of biodiversity in Indonesia while they are studying English Education, I would say their drive to do good solid work might not be as strong as their drive to get the work done in a technical fashion. The glossy thing people want to hear is that moral excellence should be what trumps all, however being cynical, I think that much of the world, or "society," around us does not permit that.
The problem with this question is that there are just so many variables. How your work is judged depends on what professor you have, what your major is, what specific class you’re in, and the type of assignment that was given to you. For me, being a journalism major, I’ve had a little bit of everything, depending on who the professor is for that class. For this blog post, I think its pertinent to discuss our major classes because, well, GE’s are a joke, and everyone knows it.
In my first class, J1, content and moral excellence was definitely a priority. If you showed that you really put effort into the reporting, asked important people the right questions, and really tried to get to the bottom of the story, you would at least get a B, even if the structure of the writing was a little off. I had Rivka Tadjer, and everyone who had her, quite frankly, loves to bitch about how she didn’t teach structure and AP Style. She left it up to us to study those things very early in the class, and we didn’t, because we’re assholes. But being a little behind on AP style never hurt me, especially when we have to take Copy Editing and Layout anyway, and it will all be drilled into our heads then. At least she taught us to do more than just get the obligatory watered-down quote from the nearest public official. But, hell, good journalism doesn’t really pay these days, does it?
This is where I think the juxtaposition comes in that influences every teacher – do I start from scratch, make them ask “why?” and focus on moral issue, or do I focus on technicality and teach them to be proficient in the every day tasks they will encounter in the “real world.” In J2, while content was still important, I felt that it swayed much more towards technical proficiency. We became machines that cranked out an 8 word lede and a two sentence nut. We learned where to get the right quotes. Of course, they had to be good quotes, but compared to my J1 experience it was far more weighted on the technical side of the scale. I don’t regret taking this course; I feel like I did gain useful skills. But it feels that when you’re learning something for the first time, being the students we were journalism, you have an opportunity to form a new way of thinking within the field – and when you hammer in the same techniques and every day tasks, you’re missing that opportunity. In other words, I don’t want to learn how to write for the Times-Herald Record, I want to learn how to write better than the Times-Herald Record.
There’s never been a better opportunity to start over and rethink everything in the field of journalism. But we’re not.
In my experience both technical and moral excellence is given attention in work and at school. I believe there needs to be a balance of both. We are raised in a way that is more technical during our years of education, and we are trained to follow the directions or face the consequences of deducted points. However, does this make you ethical person?
Moral excellence is also a key factor that is often hidden behind the dominant technical excellence. I'm sure Stephen Glass's technical excellence got him to prestigious schools, however, due to his lack of morals, he faced his downfall.
I believe moral excellence is equally of importance. As we live life communicating and interacting with people, we need to have a set of morals and ways to examine ourselves and to achieve "good work".
"Good Work" means it must be both technically good and socially responsible. I believe both are of importance mainly for self evaluation and the fact that you know you did some sort of truly "good work". Knowing that using the technical skills that we grew up with, abiding all rules and regulations to produce work and also knowing that you considered whether the work that is done is evaluated as ethical and morally correct puts the icing on the cake.
In my personal experiences in both work and school, I feel there has been a fair balance between the importance of technical and moral excellence. I personally feel that both are important, but if I had to choose between the two I would say moral excellence is more important than technical excellence. The person who ultimately gets the credit for doing "good work" has performed both technical and moral excellence.
In school we are always taught to do our best and study hard to achieve greatness. Ever since elementary school for me there has been an honor code, which states what is expected of the student morally. To be dishonest or immoral when providing technical excellence takes away from excellence of your work. For example, a student can get one hundred percent on exam achieving technical excellence, but if that student has cheated their way to the perfect score that is not "good work." The student obviously does not know the course material, and has proven they chose not to behave ethically.
In the work/business world,I feel that there is a little more emphasis on the technical excellence than moral excellence. In almost every line of work, there is an employee who has to fulfill a set of requests made to them by a higher authority. Many different factors can cause for pressure in the workforce which takes away from the importance of moral excellence and makes for a greater need to achieve technical excellence. The person who does the best job on their work, in the most timely manner gets all of the praise. Often causing pressure among workers to complete the next big project. With this competition comes dishonest tactics, and it is not uncommon to see a smaller power being payed off to keep quiet about these tactics, or to have an employee doing whatever it takes to complete their task. This is seen in almost every profession including accounting, law, journalism and medicine.
I think to achieve "good work" it is important to have technical and moral excellence. The person who has just completed the work should be able to go back and look at their work and be proud without any reservations. It doesn't pay off to have one without the other. To have perfect work done unethically is very nerve racking because at any moment you can be discovered, and the consequences can be harsh. However, having full ethical excellence and low technical excellence does not make sense because your work will never be seen by others, and it is probably not the best work that could have been done. For example, the student who didn't study or cheat on the exam gets a seventy. Perhaps if that student had studied they could have gotten an perfect score.
Being a journalism major, I've found moral excellence is encouraged for stories/articles. You are taking the facts, say of three ideal sources, a neutral, a dissenting and a positive one, and presenting their story by excluding your own bias or opinion. However, the book gave us the example of Meg Carter who redefined the journalists role towards achieving moral excellence. Apparently, she wines and dines and even seduces her sources, according to the book. However, when she's introduced to an un-familiar source, she is cold and uncaring. For example with Teresa Perrone and her private abortion story. Even though she makes an ethically hard decision to disclose a source in the end, it's too late. She should have lived by the SPJ standards for the duration of her journalism career.
Saying this, journalists should not follow her example. She chose not to minimize harm.
Also, in my own work I also see technical excellence taking a back seat. Just get the story right and we can copy edit the grammar later, 'what's the big deal that a comma was misplaced, a comma can't call you on the phone and complain that the facts are wrong.' The dynamic between the two is stressed when one is held over the other like in journalism. If you want to be the best, there's a reason why the saying "nice guys finish last" exists. Some ethical corner cutting is bound to happen.
I would say both are equally important to make any career wholesome. My intern leader is VP and she is the sweetest woman, but the editorial head was snappy and rude, but efficient in everything she'd accomplished. So i had an ethical dilemma to consider, these two women of high rank and prestige, yet they are moral compasses point in different directions. Which one is better if you can still be in their shoes? I still haven't answered it and im not sure I ever will.
Based on my experience on jobs that i have worked, i find that most if not all required both techinical and moral excellence. However, it seems that those that were more labour intensive and did not required much in the area of academic qualifications were more demanding of moral excellence yet not so much for those employees that were futher up the ladder.I found it rather hypocritical and would complain often but to no avail. On jobs that required more technical shills or academic qualifications i found that the spectrum for both cases were rather balance, more or less.
At school,both technical and moral issues were taken seriously and excellence was demanded. Immoral behavior or acts carried a more heavy burden of punishment than for a lack of technical excellence.
Both were stressed by educators as they assured us of the need of such for success in the world. This tells me that it is a rather proven fact that the two goes hand in hand but given the choice between the two, then moral excellence will take the day.
I have seen the bad fruits of those who are very competent in their professions yet lack integrity and moral fiber and the damage they have caused to society, family and to their respective career fields.
Moral excellence stands out in my 'book of life'. It is moral excellence and integrity that puts the sheen on technical excellence.
My advice would be, if you possess moral excellence but lack moral excellence then go get what thou lackest and quickly.
I'm inclined to say that usually, in my experience, technical excellence receives more attention than moral excellence, or at least is more often recognized. I'm not sure, however, if this is actually correlates to one being held as the more important of the two, of if it simply occurs because technical excellence is more easily defined and, perhaps, more readily available.
There are clear standards that can be used to measure the quality of work, from a technical perspective, in almost all fields. In journalism, sourcing, following AP standards, using a strong and engaging voice and vocabulary are all indicators of a technically sound piece of writing. What makes an article morally sound is much less readily defined and much more open to interpretation.
I personally feel that moral excellence is the more important aspect for a professional to strive for. Being technically proficient is only worthwhile if you are able to achieve some good with your work. That said, it's not always clear what the most moral course of action is. Does a journalist strive to be impartial and report the "facts" of the events alone, or do they allow themselves to perceive more than the superficial and tell the story they feel is morally important? I think that because it is easier to KNOW what technical excellence is, it is more frequently achieved and thus recognized than (the perhaps more rare and daring?) moral excellence. I believe, however, that most people want to strive for moral excellence - it is just a murkier territory to venture into. Unfortunately, when your livelihood often depends on the work that you complete, it's often safest to make sure you've exhibited technical excellence, even at the expense of pursuing the more noble (and appealing) product.
When it comes to "good work" being characterized by technical excellence and moral excellence, I believe that technical excellence is paid more attention to in the work environment. Personally speaking, having worked in an office setting multiple times I feel that employers look for you to do the job right by the books, and as long as the job is done they don't mind how you do it. The expectation of moral excellence can be there, however it is downplayed by if the job is done correctly and on a timely manner. The problem with this is at what cost should you bend the rules in order to get the job done?
In a school setting, both technical and moral excellence goes hand in hand. Professors expect you to execute the work given in an original manner, with quotes and citations properly done in the event that you need to use another person's ideas. If the moral excellence was absent, papers that are plagiarized would be accepted on the basis of proper grammar and punctuation being used, themes being properly discussed, etc. In any classroom that I have been in, academic integrity has been highly stressed, which can be seen as an ethical/moral code.
I think that technical and moral excellence in all areas--be it the work environment or a school environment--should be upheld equally. There are people who climb the ranks in their setting by doing a great technical job, but cheated the system in order to do so and that isn't fair to those who do the exact same amount of work and does it with good intention. But how do we uphold moral and technical excellence when there are such people running rampant in various industries?
I think if I had to organize it into a coherent response I would have to say that technical excellence is given the most positive attention and moral mediocrity is given the most negative attention. Moral excellence seems to be the foundation of it all, or in other words it is expected of every student that everything that they create is in good moral standing or else they would not dare turn it in. For example every student is expected to turn in original work and not copy or plagiarize off of anyone else. They will not take credit for something they did not do, and take responsibility if they did not complete an assignment. These rules are expected of every student and when they do follow them their reward is simply not being punished. In the case where someone is discovered for doing poor moral work they are generally punished severely. In the case of the SUNY New Paltz the consequences for poor moral work can be given a poor grade, being kicked out a class, and possibly kicked out of school if the plagiarism is extreme enough.
Now in the case of technical excellence it is almost the reverse of the expectations and attention that is given to moral excellence. In comparison to moral work, good technical work is not as anticipated by most people, but it is celebrated and encouraged when delivered properly. Generally the case seems to be that if you provide technological mediocrity you are chastised for it and told that you should be working harder and strive to be better in the future. However in most cases if it is a single offense or one of few the punishment will not be particularly severe but a warning is instituted that if you do not try harder on succeeding in technological excellence you may fail or be fired from your job. Now if someone were to follow all of the moral codes and properly obtain technological excellence the reward and praise they would receive could possibly consist of a raise, a good grade, but with it would come the stronger expectation from other people that this level of technological excellence should be delivered more often.
Ultimately if I had to say which form of excellence is given the most attention I would need say that it is by far the fail of moral excellence. When someone creates something great like for example a news story or just a book report, if it is all from a fabricated source or falsified information then all of the technological success that came with it becomes meaningless. Without moral excellence the technological aspect of anything loses its credibility. All of the possible praise that could have come with technological excellence is turned into disappointment for the lack of moral evidence. In my opinion the most attention is given to moral mediocrity, although that attention is negative.
As far as “good work” is concerned I believe that both of these types of successes are necessary to create something that can truly be considered by that name. The relationship between the two is what I previously mentioned, being that moral excellence is the foundation of technological excellence. Without a proper true foundation everything that is built off of it is meaningless and can not be considered good work. If given the comparison between poor moral/good technological and good moral/average technological, I would consider the latter to be in better standing of good work. I believe that one should not be rewarded or praised for cutting corners or disregarding the most basic of rules.
Personally, I feel that moral excellence is much more important than technological excellence although I try to strive for both. Ever since I was younger I found that it was better to accept credit for your own lack of work than try to take credit for something that is not honestly and truly yours. When I was in junior high school I had forgotten that I had a taken home test that was due in the next period. Surprisingly I was not alone as it seemed a large portion of my class had forgotten to do it as well. So one girl who had actually done the assignment volunteered her answers secretly to the rest of the class. I refused to take them and just took the chastisement that was coming to me. However, when the next period came around there were two forms of disappointment that were delivered. My teacher was disappointed with anyone who did not do the assignment but furious with the students that didn't do the work but attempted to take credit for the answers that were not theirs. Even in circumstances where I would not be reprimanded for lack of moral excellence, it still feels much better to take credit for the work that I have truly done myself achieving moral excellence.
Post a Comment