Is this ethical journalism? Why or why not? If not, what should journalists be doing instead? Your response is due by midnight, Monday.
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/19/291424805/in-the-absence-of-answers-we-return-repeatedly-to-the-questions?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=share&utm_campaign=storyshare
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
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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.
23 comments:
Reporting for the Flight 370 case is an interesting ethical dilemma. On one hand, like Deggans mentions in the article, the flight’s disappearance further solidifies many peoples’ concerns associated with flying. Their fears are being played out right in front of their eyes in real life. That being said, the truth is still unknown and reporters are instead broadcasting daily clues that add onto the magnificent vanishing flight. A newsworthy element of interest to the audience may be present with Flight 370. However, this should not trump the relatives’ sentiments of those missing. I agree with Deggans that there is a media circus and reporters are currently running with the latest spectacle with little regard to the fact that there is an entire plane of human lives missing.
When considering Bok’s principle, it seems that there definitely is another, more expert way to go about reporting the story. For instance, waiting for the truth. I see it credibility of many media sources decreasing simply to cave under pressure of other sources’ reports on the flight. One specific example that had me change the channel was a briefing titled, “Missing families throw bottles and other debris at Chinese officials in frustration.” This is not news in my opinion. It is instead a dramatization of a tragedy adding more flair to the media circus for outside audiences.
When considering Mill’s concept, this dramatization and invasion of privacy during a period of complete emotional chaos is an example of using people in an instrumental fashion. Their stories filled with frustration and sadness only cater toward the voyeur’s eye.
Hypothetically, when I applied Aristotle’s Golden Mean to the circumstance, I thought the balance between voyeurism and lack of any media coverage would lie in revealing a lack of effective search officials. While there have been other airlines that have disappeared throughout history, Flight 370 has caught the public’s eye as an ongoing suspicion that just does not make sense. If speculation led to a lack of qualified search officials, then it would be a journalistic responsibility to reveal that truth in order to resolve the issue.
This however, is not the known circumstance as of now. Instead, all sources continue to update audiences with useless details that only add to confusion and a lack of privacy—all of this with relevance to a media circus.
The whole Malaysia flight ordeal is so universally focused on because, as Deggans admits, it is a realization of our worst fears. This, coupled with the fact that there are multiple Americans on board, makes the story very compelling. The conflict with reporting on it comes when new information becomes stagnant. Because news organizations want to keep a competitive edge and publish more articles about the flight, they begin to develop theories on what happened to the plane, twisting the facts as justification. The ethical dilemma with this is the unnecessary hysteria it causes. Also, do news stations continuously cover the plane and keep the story fresh in our minds, or wait until more information is released so that facts are sound and checked?
As Sissela Bok would assess from this problem, there are other ways of reporting about the missing flight. For one, journalists could wait to publish new material until more information is released. They could focus on the facts they do know, rather than fabricating conspiracy theories and stories that consider only a few of the facts. Journalists could report on the efforts being made to discover the plane and other stories that relate until more evidence shows up.
In my opinion, the rapid reporting on the missing Flight 370 is not ethical at all. The news networks are more focused on keeping the audience’s attention then providing them with facts about the plane’s disappearance. This overwhelming desire for more viewers and higher ratings results in half-assed journalism. From what I’ve seen of the coverage of the aircraft’s disappearance, the media is desperate to report any and all news involving the story, whether it is actual fact or speculation. This speculation that the media continues to report to the public only fuels the fire behind the investigation. Each broadcast presents new theories as to what happened to Flight 370 in an effort to draw in a larger audience. It is this complete disregard to seek and report the truth that makes all of the media coverage on Flight 370 unethical journalism. Instead of fulfilling their duty and figuring out the facts, journalists are pandering to the public’s interest in tragedy and human suffering. For instance, I watched a report on CNN that provided no new information or facts at all, but instead repeatedly showed heart-wrenching footage of a mother in hysterics being dragged from a press conference. That same scene was played over and over again while the reporters just discussed the harsh way that she was removed from the event. This video, despite reporting on the aftermath of the plane’s disappearance, is not necessary in developing the story itself. That report was then followed by an interview with the founder of a support group for people who have lost family members in plane crashes. With this type of media coverage CNN manages to report on the disappearance of Flight 370, while not actually presenting the audience with anything new. Although neither of these reports actually contains any facts about the incident, they do manage to discuss the story while staying away from theories or speculation. For this reason, I think that CNN’s tactic of covering the story would be the closest to ethical journalism. With these two reports they managed to gain an audience’s interest and presented new information as to how people were attempting to help those affected. It may not have much substance to it, but with reports like this the media can ethically report with what very little information they have about Flight 370.
Flight 370 has become an ethical dilemma. Eric Deegans brings up a good point that people look at movies to related to this tragic event. It's a mystery yet people have become comfortable with the notion that movies can be the answers to the questions. The movies also produces the fear and the media takes advantage of that.
It's unethical because the media is providing false information. There is speculations and theories instead of hard-hitting facts. Publications like The Daily Beast and Slate becomes unreliable when information is changed and redone to get the public interested. It makes Flight 370 it's own movie rather than a tragic event that many have lost their lives to.
CNN and BCC are getting ratings, yet family members of the victims are still trying to figure out how the mysterious plane vanished. Journalists should be focusing on getting the correct information. Instead of relying on sources that gives false information and no documents to back up their points, then they shouldn't be reporting it. The pouring of stories shouldn't bring these families hope and the public at the edge of their seat like a movie. Until hard evidence is found, publications shouldn't be publishing speculations and theories.
From the beginning, reports on Flight 370 have been mixed and seemed to have been changing from day to day. Given this situation it made it impossible for reporters to accurately report on the facts of the status of the flight and more over just relay information as it came in. This type of reporting caused much false information to be spread at a rapid pace and in most situations caused more harm then good. Deggans addressed a major issue that lead hand in hand with the process of ethical journalism for this situation. Deggans stated the human nature of people comparing this missing plane to fictional plane crashes such as the TV series LOST. When comparing real life situations to fictional ones it becomes easy for stories to get misconstrued, for conspiracy theories to arise, and for people to forget about the humanity of the situation. Reporters who gave into this type of story purely for entertainment purposes rather then informative are extremely unethical. I believe the most ethical way to handle this situation and report on it as ethical as possible would be to use Aristotle's Golden Mean. Reporters have a job to fulfill, to get the truth to the public as quickly and accurately as possible. Given a situation where new information is coming out left and right, some being true and some that may not be, using Aristotle's Golden mean, it would be most ethical for reporters to attempt to find a medium between reporting accurately and reporting fast. With the gravity of Flight 370 the public wants information and they want it fast or else they will make up their own ideas and hypothesis's which if not tamed could be perceived as true from unknowing audiences. Reporters of this situation need to be mindful or reporting what they can and as quickly as possible while still being sympathetic and understanding to those families involved. This is a very rare and unfortunate situation to report on but ethically speaking, reporters need to be respectful and report as accurately as possible to cause the least amount of damage.
Journalism is a profession that ideally only reports on confirmed facts. If curiosity killed the cat then undoubtedly speculation killed journalist credibility. The extortionate amount of coverage news media, specifically television, has given to Flight 370 has become comical in it's degradation of the journalism profession. When I saw a panel of "experts" on CNN discussing the likelihood that an area of the southern seas referred to as "the Bermuda Triangle of the east" was involved I felt actually felt embarrassed to call myself a journalist. The problem, as Deggan explains, is hype. For the first time in what has seemed like a drawn out death, CNN's ratings went up, prompting news networks alike to finally utilize their 24 hour news blocks for something that might actually make them money. And where there is quantity there is a lack of quality. Speculative, rumor based "reporting" and droves of "experts" debating the latest Twitter user's conspiracy theory populated every news network for days on end. Walter Cronkite could be heard rolling over in his grave, yet no coverage was given to it amid the 3D green screen projection of commercial 747's and potential debris patterns. As Deggan points out, this rampant broadcasting of unconfirmed and objectionable information only serves to fuel fear and speculation by the public, which the media will inevitably cover resulting in a circle-jerk of epic proportions. So no, I do not believe this behavior to be ethical in the slightest. Coverage is being given to Flight 370 because the public demands it yet the known facts - facts being the only information journalist should report on - can easily be summed up in a matter of minutes and the trash "news" being aired to meet a ratings spike muddies the truth further and helps no one.
One of the issues that I see in this article is the fact that the media is comparing a real life tragedy with the tragedies that occur in television shows such as “Lost.” It is unethical that reporters are broadcasting certain things regarding the missing flight in Malaysia without knowing the actual truth. Although I agree with Deggan, that the flight’s disappearance causes many peoples to be concerned in regards to flying, but at the same time it worries the family members of those disappeared. Situations like these allow the people to want to seek the truth, but journalists aren’t satisfying them. Instead they are being told lies and untruthful reports about the situation. I feel like the media is more focused on entertaining the audience with false details rather than waiting for what is really occurring. It is good for CNN and BCC because they are getting ratings; people are drawn to tragedy. But, at the same time, there are people who lost their family members and seeing false reporting does not help the situation. I think the journalist should in fact wait for the truth.
I think everyone does this when they fly, but I usually can’t help but consider the slim possibility of my plane’s engine malfunctioning or flying into a bad storm when I look out the window of my two and a half hour flights to and from St. Louis. It’s irrational because the chances that air travel will end in fatality is 1 in 7,178 in a lifetime, whereas the chances that car travel will is 1 in 98, according to NHTSA statistics. We are desensitized to car accidents because they happen so often. When a plan goes down, however, the media has our full and undivided attention, as if we’re waiting for the news report to give us some kind of lifesaving advice on how to prevent our planes from crashing. This explains the viewer dedication to the story, but nothing explains the shallow and rushed reports by NBC, Wired and The Daily Beast other than an attempt to be the first to break a new report, debunk a theory and sustain viewership.
The two extremes on the scale of Aristotle’s Golden Mean might be defined by ‘frivolity’ on one side (reporting numerous times with marginal updates, some not even validated) and ‘reticence’ on the other (refraining from publishing for fear of reporting incorrectly). The golden mean in this instance would be a loyalty to publishing news if it is newsworthy, not just to be the first to break a new development, while maintaining awareness of more important journalistic endeavors unrelated to one specific story.
Journalists should be covering catastrophes and tragedies, of course, but for these stories to dominate every news website and channel, it deprives the public of being informed about issues perhaps more relevant. When the focus of journalists is on one story only, they do not fulfill their professional duty to inform properly. Questions that should be covered in the news regularly are stories about the state of our government, efficiency of our federal systems and the well being of our citizens - these should be staples in headlines and on front pages, not fillers for when there is no catastrophe, scandal or pop culture event to fill the front pages.
After watching a good amount of coverage about the missing plane I can confidently say that I must have heard probably over twenty possible scenarios, all discussed in detail. While this is a good way to cover the mystery of the plane, by discussing many different scenarios that might have occurred, it is all speculation and I do not speculation falls within the best ethical journalism practice.
This is a mysterious disaster that has affected so many people over the world. Like the article states, this is a scenario that is quietly hidden in the back of people’s minds, viewed and thought only about when viewed on television shows that play off such a horrifying event. People want to know what happened and they want to follow up on the latest information, which is exactly what the news outlets like CNN are giving their audience. The problem I see with that, ethically speaking, is that I feel like they are playing off this event to garnish higher ratings. They know people will continue to tune into the coverage of the plane because it’s such a huge mystery, and will continue to talk about it for the longest period possible. This can potentially lead to just bad reporting because as the time goes on, the mystery gets bigger and bigger and nothing is known for certain. The only thing left to report on is the same speculation that keeps getting twisted and changed.
People watching the coverage aren’t getting only facts, but they’re also listening to large assumptions. Their curiosity will allow CNN and other news broadcasters to continue taking advantage of the larger number of viewers, but at the cost of reliable information being told. Instead, I feel as if as long as no solid new information has occurred that can provide a definitive answer, this should stop being used as a way to lure in more viewers.
The ongoing media coverage of the MH370 disaster isn't ethical journalism. Let's look at it through a few different lenses and see just how unethical it really is.
First let's consider the calling of journalism: seek truth and report it. I hesitate to suggest that the various news outlets covering the ongoing search for the missing plane are not actually seeking truth. For the time being I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But they aren't reporting the truth. Not by a long shot. In their desperate search for material with which to fill the 24-hour news cycle, the various news media are stationing reporters across the region, hanging on every word that comes from officials, and broadcasting every new shred of information and televising every so-called expert with a theory or counter-theory on what may have happened.
I'm not suggesting that the media should simply wait until the investigation is concluded to broadcast or publish any news about the flight. Not only is it unrealistic, it would be an equally poor piece of journalism. But this coverage isn't focused on seeking truth and reporting it.
Let's be straight here. There are very few TRUTHS to report: 1. Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared en route to Beijing. 2. The plane stopped transmitting data, but satellites and other technological elements have received signals from objects believed to be the missing plane, and 3. WE DONT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PLANE, WHERE IT LANDED/CRASHED, OR IN WHAT CONDITION THE PASSENGERS AND CREW MAY BE FOUND.
So what exactly is all this "other" coverage? It's a simple term: media speculation.
Why the media speculation? Again, it's a simple reason: because we're all watching it. As Deggans says, this ongoing story confirms some of humanity's worst fears about air travel. Shows like Lost, and films like Con-Air, Flight, Alive, and Cast Away have only served to highten and dramatize those fears. So naturally, when a real-life event seems to reflect those images in our minds, we can't look away. And the news media know that. So instead of honestly and accurately reporting a fundamental lack of information and a poor effort made by the officials involved in the investigation, they broadcast and publish every new shred of evidence that comes to light, even when it's highly possible, even probable, that the content of their broadcast or publication will lack accuracy or truthfulness.
With one ethical problem covered, let's then consider the motives for these news outlets. The reason for their decisions to broadcast vague theories as information in order to comply with the term "ongoing coverage," based on what we've just established, is to keep us watching. More viewers means higher ratings. Higher ratings means more advertising fees. The basic motive, one can conclude, is money.
It isn't a "bad" or unethical motive, per se, but the key thing about this story is the fact that there are 239 human lives in play. And there are countless friends and family members of those 239 souls who are also deeply affected by the ongoing search and the ubiquitous media coverage.
To utilize this story as a means to obtain those higher ratings and thus make more money, is as Kant put it "to use humankind as a means to an end." That, in my opinion, is a far greater ethical misdeed than the poor journalism.
The situation with the Malaysian plane is an example of why people don’t trust the media. Every news outlet from The Slate to NBC’s Today Show to CNN is fighting to gain viewers through the most sensationalized stories, not the most truthful facts. Clearly journalists should be asking the right questions and fact checking every detail. Maybe the journalists are doing this but their organization is telling them to withhold the information to bring in more ratings for a “Lost” or “Alive” version of the story. Flight 370 is the type of story that you have to stop following once it starts. It’s a very sad and true case for any non-partisan scandals. EVERYONE can pounce on top of a story and make it their own little soap opera. Unfortunately, there are so many important stories we’re missing out on because of the obsessive coverage. I don’t have much to say other than how dreadful this is. The tragedy of Flight 370 was bad enough, the media is just adding the rotten cherry on top.
In my opinion, I feel as though the media has no right to even touch this story unless they are novelty stories. For journalists to report on the missing Malaysian airplane is un-ethical, unless the facts are completely accurate. I thought that this article was a good insight for the public to realize how sensationalized the media is becoming. I think Deggan did a great job comparing the media to the movies because this whole scandal is just a whirlwind of speculations. The job of a reporter is to confidently inform the public of news worthy information. Just as everyone else posted, I have read and watched so many different stories about what "could have happened" to this airplane.
Agreeing with what Deegan said, I feel as though the coverage for this story is appealing because it strikes people's worst fears. The story is so terrifying it almost doesnt seem real, which makes people interested in it. This didnt happen close to the US, and the impact of the tragedy didn't directly effect Americans, so what is going to make this story news worthy? The emotional appeal and speculations is what makes this story unethical, because the media is trying to grab our attention. The intentions are also unethical, and I think for those effected, that is horrifying.
I think one of the biggest ethical issues here is comparing a real life crisis and tragedy to events that happen in Hollywood. Yes, I agree that those shows, Lost and Alive do depict real life fears many people have but the fact that people are taking their obsession with those fictional stories, applying them to real life and believing anything they hear on the news even if not it is not 100% true just shows how corrupt society truly is. A lost airplane with real people’s lives in danger is not something people should be treating as entertainment! I think it is also ethically wrong for the news networks to care more about their viewings then giving viewers real hard facts and not theories. The Malaysia flight crisis became more sensational each time the news networks came up with these theories. In my opinion this was bad journalism because the value of truth in “seek truth and report it,” has totally been corrupted. What is truth anymore?
The reporting on Flight 370 has not been ethical. The goal of every journalist that is reporting on the subject matter is to keep the audience with their outlet. While they are doing this they are more concerned with exaggerating the story than they are with the presenting the facts, and then moving on to another topic to discuss.
I believe that it is important for journalists and news outlets to be covering stories such as this. I just think they shouldn’t be reporting on it for the hell of it. They need to advance the story. If they are unable to advance the story at a certain point then they need to report on other topics until they can. The audience isn’t benefited at all from journalists reporting information that has no relevance or what they suspect has happened.
After hearing numerous outlets repeat the same information as well, I conclude that this is not ethical journalism. I think it is safe to conclude that these companies know just as much as their counterparts knows when it comes to reporting on the missing Malaysia airline. Since this story is really current, no one has been found,and the strangeness of the disappearance, the constant updates is inevitable. However, Journalists are not taking the time out to exercise good journalism by fact checking and making sure they have credible sources to decrease a confusion between the media and the public.The lack of uncertainty makes the public more antsy to find out the truth but this does not happen because Journalists are confusing. Thus making the public's worst fears rise and further secure their distrust in the media to do the right thing.
When you apply the Sissela Bok model you can tell that the Journalists in question are not applying their conscious to this story. The reasons range from strict deadlines, pressures from their editors, etc. but this should not compromise the content printed. As a journalist you should know what you are heading into when you start this career. Flight 370 is a very emotional and sensitive story because families of the victims of the planes are scared, not knowing if their families members are alive or dead. Printing untruthful information just plays with their emotions a bit too much, even if they print a correction. This could have been avoided if the Journalist had a done a better job at seeking out expert sources. Taking information from other news sources is dangerous because you don't know whether or not their information is correct, so you are just circulating incorrect information. All news companies are competing for the same goal, in this case it is to have the most correct information. But, no one knows any new information which ultimately leads to speculation. In the end, this does not do anything to benefit the public's fears of flying and whether or not they get to see/find out what happened to their relatives on the plane.
As an avid Lost fan the speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding flight 370's mysterious disappearance is undeniably compelling to me. Perhaps I am one of the sheep the media draws in with tales of missing flights, but I can't quite help it, and it seems like the world feels the same, all at the edge of our seats looking to the media for new information.
That's why it is not ethical for the media to put out speculation, despite the high demand for information from curious viewers such as myself. Networks are trying to get and maintain the attention of the audience rather than informing them. When the debris was first found the networks claimed right away that it was from the flight, but now evidence shows it has nothing to do with 370. This kind misinformation for the sake of a story is unacceptable and even more outrageous with such a high profile case.
The networks are releasing hearsay to the public perpetuating fear and assumptions. For all we know the passengers of Flight 370 can be stranded on an island much like their fictional counterparts on Lost. The fact is, we do not know, but the media does not want to admit that they do not either.
In the beginning I was hearing all these extremely contrasting reports about flight 370 and immediately thought that it was a situation like the show lost or something having to do with a government conspiracy. I understand that the role of journalism and the media is to inform the public, but where the problem lies is that they took what little information they had and ran with it before checking if anything was factual or not. Another piece of this puzzle that doesn't sit right with me is the fact that the media was playing off of the common phobias or fears of the american public in order to get better ratings and make money. the ethical way to approach the situation would have been to wait until the full truth came out and then report on the story and not give into the different conspiracy theories.
Deggans' piece is a criticism of various media outlets' coverage of the missing plane. He mentions that speculation is often taking up time in between reporting facts but also notes that facts aren't being presented accurately. While I see the importance in debunking falsehoods, Deggans' approach can potentially be taken as offensive statements toward the publications he calls out and turn the actual story (people's lives being at stake)into a shouting match between rival news sources. The problem is that if journalists begin speculating on speculation, they are simply removing the actual story further from the attention on the masses. This can be just as bad as talking about TV shows. To find a balance, I would recommend reporting periodically and in a brief fashion to state the facts: that no new facts are available but the search continues. This would allow the public to keep the lives affected in their minds while not having to suffer through conspiracy theories and arguments about hypothetical scenarios. The trick is honesty. I would not consider Deggans' piece ethical journalism even though I agree with most of his remarks. When facts are available, they will be able to outweigh inaccurate reporting with real journalism.
This is not an example of ethical journalism, though due to the system that controls the media, it is the necessary journalism to succeed. Anyone who says that this is ethical journalism is crazy, in my opinion. There is an abundance of unreliable and ever-changing data and information. It is impossible to report the truth when the truth isn’t even known. Sadly, every update on the topic of the Malaysian Airlines is presented as the “new” truth to the situation. Ethical journalism is the honest reporting of a story. I don’t think that any of the reporting is meant to be a lie, but news outlets are more worried about their numbers and ratings than making sure their information is perfect.
In a perfect journalistic world, I think that news outlets should cover this story about Flight 370 with quick, short updates about ongoing investigations and should only report information to the public that is confirmed by multiple sources as well as evidence. Also, news outlets should not be using this story as a way to connect with the public and increase their ratings. Good journalism does not need to be a topic of interest (such as people’s fear of plane crashes) if it is done correctly and truthfully.
From other circumstances we’ve discussed in class, it’s easy to pity and/or despise the audience’s never satisfied greed for information that may not be ethically sound; they feed these media outlets supplying them with inadequate information, and the media outlets continue to keep hold of their audience, and it becomes one big continues pattern of stupidity feeding stupidity. However, I think this warrants a somewhat understanding lens. Plane crashes are devastating tragedies. I can imagine there are few people who get on a plane without the thought that it might crash - the concept of flying, especially after 9/11, is intertwined with fear. So when something like this does happen, and is so closely relatable to television programs as stated in the article, I do not blame the public for speculating, and grappling for any piece of information they can have. People want to speculate because they know, with all the misinformation flying around, that the media does not know and can only speculate along with them – they just want the fact that are available to formulate the best speculation and getting the closest to the truth. They want what in this case should happen, and what journalists should be attempting to create – a mutual journey with the media to discover the truth. But that’s not what is happening.
There is nothing wrong with multiple possible scenarios being presented by the media, but there is something screwed up about the focus being placed on the scenarios, rather than the facts that these scenarios are stemming from. We talked about Kant, Mill, and Rawls’ theories last class, and it is safe to say that with the this unethical system fails all of them. The media is using people’s obsession with this story as means to the end result of good ratings, and Kant wouldn’t agree. What’s more, the screwed up means isn’t even providing an outcome that benefits everyone, because false information means false possible scenarios that don’t bring us closer to the truth, but push as away. The media isn’t thinking about the Veil of Ignorance, and thinking that if they were the news consumer they would rather be given reliable facts and allowed to formulate their own conclusions, but rather basing their ethical standards on their own desires – ratings and money.
News anchors can’t even make heads or tails of what information they’ve been given, and as the Associated Press notes, “the missing plane has become an international news sensation, sparking ratings increases for CNN's immersive coverage and filling 17 of the 20 most popular articles on the BBC's website.” In the time AP took to look up the statistics and formulated that little piece of data, they could have been sorting through information and formulating facts about what really happened to this missing plane. Goes to show what is really on the media’s mind isn’t really what is on ours.
...but, alas! O poor, poor Yorick!!!
[ -Shakespeare]
Our finite existence is over
in the time it takes Almighty
God to blink. What I want you
chaps to do is focus on becoming
saints N leeeve that where it
belongs: in Jesus' Hands:
Do you...
1) love Almighty God?
2) love your neighbor?
Cya Upstairs soon ♥️
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