Ethics in Journalism Essay
Journalism is one of the most important fields of practice that every person should have to consider with their practice and activities. This is the application of news reporting made by journalists to a certain scenario or circumstance that is relevant to the community. The goal of journalism is to provide awareness to the public regarding the trending news and latest updates our society’s activities. In this case, valuing the significance of news reporting correspond to ethical applications for every journalist and news networks for displaying and reporting relevant information to the public. The main purpose is to inform the public regarding a scenario that might cause a risk to the involved community. The reason behind is to prevent any risks or hazards that are causing a stress to the society.
Ethics in journalism comes with a responsible way of relaying information to the public. One of the main reasons is to prevent conflicting interests with the public as well as with the local government units. Every detailed news report comes with the principle of veracity because the public needs to know the realness of the information being published online. Responsible publication of articles and news reporting comes with a professional responsibility by the journalists. The reason behind is to ensure that the productivity of the news becomes reliable to the public. Relating information according to their interest provides a reason for the society to render their trust with the journalist who is responsible for reporting certain news. If the journalist continues to provide a professional way of publishing relevant news, they start to gain respect from their fellow colleague as well as by the public.
We usually observe that numerous fake news reports are now proliferating over the internet. Examples are news about a celebrity or a political icon that passed away recently. However, the authenticity of the article published online fails to verify it because the person who published the article is not an official journalist. Journalists sometimes are at risk for committing plagiarized news reporting due to the fact that information that has been reported has similar content with the reporter’s news report. This is the reason why news networks established a syndicated reporting to ensure that copyright infringements will not affect major news networks responsible for promoting news and latest updates. Ethics in journalism applies with the respect of privacy for individuals or respondents who do not want to have their names or face displayed by the camera and the computer graphics expert of the news network.
One of the most important ethical applications of journalism is to report a certain scenario that does not violate the rights of other individuals. The reason behind is to prevent any corruption of viewer’s minds as they are keen on listening or watching the news to become aware of any relevant information that affects their personal issues. Examples are racism, pornography, profanity, graphic image or videos, discrimination, hate speech, verbal arguments, or intentional segregation. News reporters proofread their articles or news before publishing it on the public space to prevent any risk of getting involved in lawsuits. Some journalists are usually summoned by courts for getting involved in libel or slander lawsuits filed by the complainant who was offended by the article or the news recently reported to the public (Ames, 2011).
Ames, Roger T. (2011). Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3576-7.