How is Prof. Miraldi's discussion of muckraking related to the work of Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey? In your view, is any story worth risking your life for?
Your response is due Monday, Nov. 11, 4 p.m.
http://allpoetry.com/poem/8505443-Courage-by-Anne_Sexton
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3870543n&tag=related;photovideo
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
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
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.
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.
12 comments:
Professor Miraldi's discussion of muckraking relates to the work of Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey because Seymour Hersh, like the aforementioned, is known for pursuing his stories to the source and putting his life on the line for the facts. Muckraking requires building relationships with sources, both positive and negative. Sources include cops, criminals, and everything in between. Guerin and Bailey were both murdered by people who wished them dead because of the work they were doing. Hersh is still alive today, but his work has inevitably put him on many people's "bad side."
I do not think that I would put myself in a life threatening position for a story - partially because I do not plan on becoming an investigative reporter, and partially because I have yet to find an issue or story that I would put my life on the line for. There is something to be said for those whose passion for getting the story or seeking the truth proves to be greater than their desire for safety or life. Bailey, Guerin, and Hersch all hold a place in history for their "get the facts or die trying" mentality.
Prof. Miraldi’s discussion on muckraking relates to the work of Guerin and Bailey because the discussion centered on the work of Seymour Hersh. Being an investigative journalist himself, Hersh’s work involved extensive interviewing as well as placing himself right in the midst of controversial and sometimes physically endangering situations/people. He, like the others, showed a degree of courage by attempting to tackle issues that would inevitably put on the bad side of many of the people involved.
The only story I would ever risk my life for is one in which the outcome of my reporting results in a definite, substantial reduction in pain and suffering for a large group.
One of the most overused, borderline trite quotes of all time is "If a man has not found something worth dying for, he is not fit to live." I totally agree with it, though. What is a journalist if not someone who commits their life (literally) to telling the truth?
I think that the conversation isn't really about the story itself, it's about the truth. I wouldn't die for a story, but if there was a truth that could fix things - if there was a truth that people needed to know, that I could only investigate by putting my life on the line - I probably would. That is, assuming it had world-changing gravity and import, and was the kind of thing that would save lives or do great justice.
Hersh is probably on a lot of people's shit list. Like, literally everyone in higher offices who have a secret probably wish Hersh would up and die. And he obviously knows that - but he also operates under a high profile. Someone executing Seymour Hersh would had better have his tracks covered, because putting down a big figure like that will inevitably lead to investigations and repercussions. Guerin and Bailey, however, were just reporters - not superstars - and as such, got themselves killed. All three are noble, though: all three have moved on in spite of death threats because they felt the need to get the truth across, no matter what. And that's really cool.
Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey's work is similar to the work described in Miraldi's discussion of investigative reporting and muckraking. Miraldi mostly talked about the highly esteemed investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh. Hersh wasn't afraid to stir up controversy or piss anyone off, according to Miraldi. That coupled with his strong determination to tell a story is very similar to the determination and will of Bailey and Guerin.
Is a story worth risking your life for? That really is a difficult question to answer. With today's public being so numb to what they see in the media, I don't feel like I would want to risk my life to cover a story that would get less public attention than Miley Cyrus's latest twerking disaster.
I want to answer in a more selfless manner, but I feel honesty is more important.
From my experiences, or maybe lack of, I probably wouldn't risk my life over a story. My perspective could change if I were say, reporting in Syria for a year and felt more personally inclined to make a stand after witnessing the atrocities firsthand.
What Professor Miraldi's lecture really made me think about is just how far muckrakers will go to obtain a story. I think that there is a mentality among muckrakers to get the truth at all costs, no matter what. Sy Hersh definitely falls into that category, as did Guerin and Bailey. Sy Hersh, to me represents the absolute ideal of the raging, inexorable journalist, the kind that cares very little about what colleagues and sources think, and makes many enemies along the way. Although Sy Hersh, is the example of how this unstoppable pursuit can go right, Guerin and Bailey are the examples of how it can go wrong, as they both were killed in the search for it.
All three of these journalists, however, do possess a great amount of guts and iron will that I do admire very much. But is it worth risking your own life to obtain the truth, I'm sure if you asked them all three would answer absolutely. It is that kind of passion about journalism that is what will be necessary to carry the medium into the future. That said, I still don't know if making that sacrifice is worth it. I suppose that it is entirely up to the journalist themselves whether they want to take that risk, as physical harm often comes with the territory in muckraking journalism.
Professor Miraldi’s discussion of muckraking related to the work of Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey because Miraldi’s lecture focused on the works of Seymour Hersh. Muckraking involves searching out the truth in order to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Unethical methods are used to obtain information, such as seduction in Guerin’s case. The reliability of the sources are not checked as long as it leads to uncovering the truth. Guerin and Bailey were murdered for investigating people for stories, while Hersh remains probably one of the most hated men by high profile people.
I don’t think just any story is worth risking your life for. However, uncovering a truth that the public needed to know and was being denied is worth it. If I discovered information that would help a large number of people or grant someone justice that was wronged, then I would risk my life. Looking at this scenario from a utilitarian perspective, the truth sought would need to benefit the majority, if I was going to put my life on the line. I think anyone that is willing to search for the truth no matter the costs is admirable.
I thought Professor Miraldi's lecture about muckraking connects greatly to that of the work of both Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey. Like Seymour Hersh, Guerin and Chauncey risked their lives to reveal the truth behind the issues occurring in their local areas. They used reliable undercover sources in order to get the information they needed for their stories. Guerin was interested in uncovering the muck in Dublin, Ireland, while Bailey wanted to unveil the problems in his Afrifcan American community in California. Although they both lost their lives in the process, they showed reporters what it means to dive deep into a story, especially if it means going undercover and protecting identities to receive information.
To say whether or not a story is worth risking your life for is a difficult question to answer. I think it depends on the circumstances of the story. If it is a story that potentially has a strong backbone, then I might risk myself to present the truth. However, if there is not enough to support the story then I cannot say I would sacrifice myself for it. Risking your life is a major choice, and it is one that many reporters in the past have made. Even though I might not be fully invested in the idea, I respect those who succeed at doing so.
Prof. Miraldi's discussion of muckraking relates to the work of Guerin and Bailey because they all have to do with investigative reporting and risking one's life to get the truth out. Seymour Hersh put his life at risk and pissed a lot of people off just to get the story he was investigating out to the public. Guerin and Bailey were doing similar things that unfortunately led to their deaths.
Personally, I don't know that I would risk my own life for a story. Like the rest of my classmates have said, unless the truth I am seeking to report benefits a large group of people and will lead to a solution to a problem, I feel that it would be an exception.
It's unfortunate that Guerin and Bailey's lives were ended just because they were doing their job. But that's a risk that I think every journalist has to choose to take throughout their career. Whether they choose to risk their life or not, that is up to them. Guerin and Bailey seemed to not want to stop their job and continued on.
The work of the muckrakers can lead to Journalist being in situation which can threaten their life. Hersh definitely would have perused this story until the end. I think the important thing to note is that Hersh puts a lot of emphasis on building close relationships with sources, and to be a chameleon when reporting. I wish I had more context about the method Bailey used to interview members of the community about the Bakery.
I personally would not go to these extremes in covering a story unless I had personal investment in the issue I was covering. I would have to have such an extreme emotional connection with the purpose of the story.
In Professor Miraldi's speech, he spoke about Seymour Hersh. He talked about and the way he uncovered stories, through extensive interviewing, but also by going after a story — not waiting for sources to find him but by putting himself near them, by interjecting himself into their lives and getting them to talk. It's the kind of work that, like Veronica Guerin and Chauncey Bailey, will absolutely get people to hate you, in part because of the relentless way you go about getting information, but ultimately for what you write and reveal.
At this point, i can't see myself putting my life at risk for a story. But maybe i just haven't found what would make me passionate enough to make that potential sacrifice. It takes a lot of courage to go after these stories, but it also requires you to be smart enough to evaluate what subjects are worth the risk — will it pay off.
Prof. Miraldi's lecture on muckraking connects to Guerin and Bailey's work by bringing to the forefront discussions of life or death situations that can occur when a reporter is trying to do his or her job. Hersh, Guerin and Bailey each took certain risks, determining that revealing the truth was more important than the risks.
I can't help but think of the golden mean when it comes to the decision to pursue a life-threatening story. Courage is a virtue, certainly, but the purest and best form of courage lies between cowardice and bull-headed stupidity. If I were to risk my life or the life of my loved ones for a story, it would have to be the sort of story that desperately needed to be told. And I'd want to operate using the sort of courage that rests very clearly in the "golden" territory.
I left this comment yesterday on campus but it clearly didn't save to the website:
Professor Miraldi's lecture about risky reporting relates directly to Guerin's and Bailey's personal work. Reporting anything that has the potential to damage others is a risk. Reporters have their lives threatened on a personal basis as well as on the job more often than I think most people realize.
Those who report overseas for NPR or other aggressive news companies often are captured, threatened or even killed. There is an aspect of the greater good that we have talked about often in this class that I believe applies here. There are risks in uncovering corruption, mafia involvement, public figure controversy, and those powerful people have the ability to hurt reporters and/or their families. Reporting in it's purest form is a public service like the police or fire fighters. Putting your life on the line for the truth is just as courageous in my opinion as saving people from the line of fire.
Post a Comment