07.00 Starting Your Project

            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 18^th 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?