The Need for Ethics in the Media J:4470

The Need for Ethics in the Media

Everyday, society is bombarded by the media. From social media to the news, beginning journalists to the pro’s face ethical decisions when discussing issues with the public. In a field where journalists must make the right decision everyday does not mean that they will or do. As journalists begin to approach a story, they must think of how the information they write will affect the public.

In an earlier journalism class, we watched a story where journalists did not make the right ethical decision when spreading a story to the public. We are told, as growing journalists, to never dip as low as taking pictures of a dead body for an article or to ever use something that may disrespect a grieving family in a news story.

In February 2001, Karla Gutierrez swerved into a Miami canal. As the car was sinking, she called 911 Emergency for help. During this time the dispatcher did not know where the car was located to send help. Inevitably the car sank and Gutierrez drowned. The last words she ever spoke were with the dispatcher who could not explain to Gutierrez how to get out of the car.

Once the story was in the hands of journalists, there was a decision they had to make: to use or not to use the 911 call as part of their story? Unfortunately, multiple journalists made the wrong decision that day in playing the 911 call in their story. In the time they had to choose whether or not to use the call as part of their story, they should have known that it would disrespect the grieving family.

Although they made the wrong decision that day, it truly shows the importance of having morals when deciding what to do with a piece of information such as the 911 call. This is where the ethical decision not to use this piece of information should have come into play, which is why there is a very high need for ethics in the media.

Unfortunately, journalists still make these mistakes. These mistakes may not happen very often, but they still happen on occasion. Because journalists are in the spotlight all of the time, I believe there needs to be an ethic’s course that journalists must take every few years. In times where stories are pressing to be released, journalists must be able to make the correct decision with information they know.

These courses would put a journalist in a time crunch to make a quick decision between right and wrong. During these courses, journalists would be told the consequences of the decision they chose. Throughout the course, journalists would then be able to decipher right and wrong in seconds and what happened with Gutierrez’s case would never happen.

When I turn on the news, I do not want the gruesome parts of a story. I do not want to see a picture of a dead body or hear the last words of a man who is about to die. I’m not saying I want the news to smell of roses or have the beauty of a butterfly, I’m saying I’d like it to be a little bit more censored than what journalists do nowadays.

Society has been so desensitized to the media; there is no way to decipher if what they are watching has been chosen ethically or morally from the medium that is putting the information out there. I believe it is the responsibility of the media to choose rightly from the very beginning, so there is never a question of whether or not what they have done is ethical or not. To make a right or wrong decision is around us constantly, we just need the knowledge and skill to choose right over wrong.