In media and journalism, ethics are important but tricky to understand. It can be a bit of a game that starts with a desire to understand a particular practice, finding one organization that says to do x, thinking that’s what you should always do, then seeing something that says to do x but think about y, and realizing you may have been wrong in your original thinking.
This has happened to me in many different instances — I research a particular protocol I want to learn about, find an answer, put it into practice, realize it may not be so cut-and-dried, and backtrack on my thinking. Which makes me think that nobody has the answer, or rather, there is no answer to any sort of ethical dilemma in media.
Of course, there are definite ethical practices in journalism, like telling the truth and keeping quotes in the correct context. But the more layered situations, like what to do if a source wants to see an article before it’s published, or what to do if you publish a mistake (the answer may seem simple—fix it—but there’s a lot more to it, such as issuing corrections or figuring out what to do if you’ve printed a mistake that can’t be changed easily).
Last week I spoke with CAL Professor John Horgan, Director of the Stevens Center for Science Writings, and asked about ethics. He said, “ethics are contextual,” which I think is a really great way of summarizing what I’m trying to say. In addition to that, he also expressed that he likes ethical case studies, further developing this idea that ethics are not as simple as one code that must be followed no matter the situation. He also advised me to write about some of the situations The Stute has dealt with in these editorials, which is what I’m going to do.
Earlier this semester we had an instance where a source wanted to be anonymous, meaning that they didn’t want us to name them when attributing information or specific quotes. A lot of times anonymity is frowned upon because it can be hard for readers to trust the source if they don’t know who it is. For all they know, we could be making it up! Which of course we wouldn’t do because hello, ethics, but nevertheless a lot of organizations are strict with when they allow anonymity. But an organization granting anonymity shouldn’t be either yes or no; it depends on the situation. In our case, a source was sharing information about a particular professor’s classroom etiquette and didn’t want their name attached, which is completely understandable. Anonymity, granted.
Another situation we faced a couple of weeks ago was a source wanting to preview an article before it was published. We recently made a new policy addressing this request we often get, which can be read here as our “Accuracy Checking Policy.” In short, it states that sources requesting a change to quotes for reasons other than fact-checking or fact clarity will be denied, and writers should refrain from sending finished stories back to sources before they’re published. Hence the words, “should refrain,” meaning that sometimes it might be okay to send a story back to a source. If the entire article is a Q&A where all the answers are verbatim from the source, that’s fine. However, we didn’t realize this when this situation came up for us, and we denied sending the article back to the source. The article was 80% verbatim which was our mistake, and this is why it’s important to understand ethics as being contextual.
I think the most important thing to know is that in making ethical decisions, it’s good to have a list of policies or practices to reference, but you also have to know that a list is limiting. It won’t account for every situation; you have to be able to take each instance as it comes and decide what to do every time. Of course this means you’re going to make mistakes and sometimes make the wrong decision. The important thing is that you accept mistakes will happen, and you won’t be perfect. All you can do is make the best decision you can with the information you have and learn from the situation to make a better decision next time.
The Stute Editorial is an Opinion column written by the current Editor in Chief of The Stute to address and explain editorial decision making, discuss news and media issues, and develop a sense of trust and transparency between readers and members of The Stute.
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