Before
I enrolled in Journalism I, I didn’t know much about journalism. Moreover, I
didn’t really care about journalism. It
was kind of something I knew existed, but that didn’t pertain to me and that
might interest me as an adult. If I thought anything, I thought that it was a
way to get information about news about wars, elections, and other major events
to the general public. I definitely never considered it as a career – I had
other talents I wished to foster. For me, the word “journalist” brought to mind
the contrasting images of either old men in top hats from the 18th
century writing about the Revolution, or young, fashionable female television reporters
with too much makeup. I certainly never thought about the morality of these
characters – the idea of biases and ethicality applying to journalism were
pretty much foreign to me. Sure, I knew that some journalistic organizations
were more reputable than others, but I couldn’t have told you which were which.
Because I didn’t know much about unethical companies, I didn’t know about the
existence of fraudulent journalistic material or their differences from
ordinary news. I’d heard that the magazines lining the grocery store checkout
counters with the big headlines and eye-catching pictures (I’d later learn
they’re called “tabloids”) held untrue contents, but that information always
baffled me. What sort of newsmagazine would publish false information?
I
now think of journalism very differently than I used to. I think it encompasses
much more than I originally believed. I also have different views on
journalists. Before I took this course,
I thought all journalists were highly educated professionals. Now I know that
anyone can be a journalist, and just because his or her work doesn’t always get
published in The New York Times, or
aired on NPR, that doesn’t make it any less important. To me, journalism is in
existence to tell people what is going on in the world, and if you want to
fulfill that, it doesn’t matter how you do it.
Ethics
now play a huge part of my understanding of journalism. Codes of ethics are
guidelines that can help you in ethical dilemmas, or situations where there are
good arguments for both sides of the story. Additionally, they warn against acts like
ruining your colleagues’ work and exploiting copyrighted material. Journalists
also face ethical challenges in their everyday work; if you were reporting on a
natural disaster you would want to help the victims, but from a journalistic
standpoint, your involvement would increase your biases toward the people. As I
learned, biases in any way, shape, or form should be avoided at all costs.
There is a place for opinionated writing, but the news is not it! Some biases,
however, are ingrained in us and are too small to really matter anyway. Some of
these biases are inspired by our age, gender, or prior experiences. That is
why, in order to be truly impartial, you should avoid reporting on things you
are involved in. This is a big difference compared to what I knew about ethics
and how to uphold them before this class, which was basically nothing!
Though
I’ve learned a lot about journalism in this class, I have no desire to pursue
it as a career. I find it interesting, but I have other interests and talents
that I’d rather work with instead. Despite the fact that I don’t want to be a
journalist, I admire their work and can appreciate it much more. I believe
journalism is critically important to our society, and it will continue to grow
in significance. Our world, especially the U.S., is constantly changing, and
without journalism how would we ever know what’s going on?
