I’m pleased to share another guest article with you.
Joe Wisinski worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, a radio news announcer, and as the executive producer of the web site at a 24-hour TV news station. He currently is an adjunct professor at the University of Tampa.
I was also an executive producer at the same TV station in Tampa and worked closely with Joe. We became good friends.
I had the privilege of speaking to Joe’s class at UT and getting to know his students. Ethics was always high on the list for discussion and question/answer.
I’m pleased to share Joe’s guest article with you about how journalists make ethical decisions and why it matters.
It was a typical morning for a family living in a small Pennsylvania city. Dad was working; Mom and their 1-year-old child were in their home’s living room, along with the family dog. Mom left the room momentarily, and for unknown reasons the dog attacked the child, injuring her so badly that she died within hours.
The dog, perhaps sensing that it did something wrong, ran off to another neighborhood and took refuge on a porch. Police officers arrived and surrounded the animal. A photographer from the local newspaper also arrived and took a photo of the dog, with the blood of the 1-year-old victim still on its mouth and throat.
The next morning the newspaper published a large photo of the dog on the front page, in color, complete with the victim’s blood.
Ethical Dilemmas
This story is a good example of journalists facing an ethical dilemma. What should a news outlet do with a graphic photo of a dog that had just killed a 1-year-old girl?
On one hand, the photo was undoubtedly newsworthy. It met journalistic criteria such as being timely, important, unusual, and of human interest.
But its publication hurt people.
Competing values are at the core of all ethical decisions journalists make. In this case, the newspaper had the right to publish a newsworthy photo, but the victim’s family had a right to privacy and respect.
Here are some other examples of when competing values existed, and therefore an ethical decision had to be made:
reporting a story could have compromised public safety
A man barricaded himself with hostages inside a shooting range, holding a gun to the heads of his hostages and threatening to kill them. The sheriff’s office asked news outlets to not report any information about the situation. Their fear was that news coverage would anger the gunman and possibly lead him to harm the hostages. The ethical dilemma: news outlets had the right to broadcast the story, but the public had the right to remain safe.
reporters violated cultural standards
Reporters got jobs at a grocery store chain so they could do news reports about outdated meat reportedly being sold. To get the jobs they had to lie. The ethical dilemma: the reporters had the right to work anywhere they could, but our cultural standards prohibit lying on job applications.
a reporter made a political statement while covering a campaign
A TV journalist wore a hat that supported a particular presidential candidate while reporting on the candidate’s campaign stop. The ethical dilemma: the reporter had a right to hold his political views, but viewers had the right to know that they were getting an unbiased report of the candidate’s appearance.
News outlets face ethical dilemmas such as these on a regular basis. So how do journalists make decisions in ethical matters?
Walking through the ethical decision-making process
Here’s a good procedure to follow for making sound ethical choices. There are four steps:
1. Gather the facts
2. Consider the involved parties
3. Develop options
4. Make your decision
We’ll walk through the process of making an ethical decision using the dog photo as an example. You’re the newspaper’s editor and the photo lands on your desk. How it’s handled is up to you. What will your decision be?
The first step is obvious:
1. Gather the facts
No one can make a good decision without having all the facts. But a caveat is that journalists must make sure information is accurate. Truth is sometimes difficult to determine, but in this case, you know the facts; they’re as I outlined them earlier.
Also, journalists must leave their personal feelings out. Your sadness about the girl’s death or anger at the dog should not influence your final decision.
It’s useful to ask at this time, “What are the competing values?” That is, is it newsworthiness versus:
invading privacy?
compromising public safety?
violating cultural standards?
creating a conflict of interest?
Or is it a combination of the above?
In this case we’re looking at invading privacy and violating cultural standards.
The second step in making an ethical decision is to:
2. Consider the involved parties
Many people are potentially affected by an ethical decision. Those impacted are called stakeholders, and there are six of them.
The decision maker
The person who makes the decision must live with the consequences. He or she must be able to sleep at night. What decision on the photo would allow you to say you did your duty as a journalist, and yet let you look in a mirror without flinching?
His or her employer
A journalist may make what he believes to be a sound ethical decision, but the next day the boss calls him to her office and says, “Close the door.” You can see where that’s a problem.
A concept called competitive pressure comes into play here. Rivalry among media outlets is fierce, and one outlet may make an ethical decision a certain way because it believes it will “beat the competition.” But that’s not a good reason to make a poor ethical decision. So consider what your employer may say about what you decide, and don’t let your competition unknowingly pressure you into making a poor decision.
In our example, what do you think your news manager would say about the photo’s publication?
Our third stakeholder is:
The person or group who is the object of the story or photo
Remember we’re contrasting the newsworthiness of the photo with the privacy of the girl’s family. Do you think the published photo violated the family’s privacy? Did it hurt the girl’s family and friends? If it did, was it worth it for the sake of newsworthiness?
Advertisers or other financial supporters
Virtually all mass media depends on either advertising or donations. A journalist may think he made a good decision, but financial supporters may think otherwise.
After publication of the dog photo the newspaper lost some subscribers and reportedly some advertisers. Are you willing to take that risk and publish the photo in the interest of newsworthiness?
The next stakeholder is:
The profession of journalism
Surveys and polls show that the public does not hold mass media in high esteem. Journalists don’t need to further erode that opinion with poor ethical judgments.
How do you think the public responded to the photo? Here is what some subscribers said in emails to the newspaper:
“Why did you have to run a photo of that dog on the front page? My stomach was in a knot a good part of the morning.”
“The people who printed this need to think how they would feel if this were their family going through this terrible, unimaginable nightmare.”
“I think someone at [the newspaper] should lose their job over this picture. How
low can a company go just to make some sales?”
“What a bunch of heartless jerks. I hope they have trouble sleeping at night.”
The final stakeholder is:
Society as a whole
The profession of journalism is a high calling. What journalists publish and broadcast holds the power to change the world. They must not harm society with poor ethical decisions.
But here is something to consider about the publication of the photo: it may have kept similar attacks from occurring. Someone who saw the photo may have said, “You know, we’ve been a little lax in letting Suzie and Rover play together without supervision. We better be more careful.” The photo’s publication may literally have saved another child’s life. We’ll never know.
Now on to the third step in the ethical decision-making process.
3. Develop options
This is perhaps the most important step in the process, and yet it’s the must disregarded. I’ve been a part of scores of ethical decisions in newsrooms, and unfortunately most times the alternatives were limited to yes/no, black/white, do it/don’t do it. That’s a grave error. Journalists should engage in what’s essentially a brainstorming session to come up with other options. Note that during this brainstorming session you don’t necessarily have to come up with viable options. The idea is to develop as many possibilities as you can.
In this situation, here are some possibilities, starting with either publishing or not publishing the photo as is. Those are the obvious choices. Let’s move beyond them. Some other options are:
Make the photo smaller
Run it in black and white
Crop or blur the photo
Bury the photo deep in the paper
Use a graphic content warning
Run it only on the web site
Those are all good possibilities, but the real beauty comes when we start combining options. So you might make the photo black and white and also smaller. Or blur the dog’s face and use a graphic content warning. Or run it only on the web site, and blurred, and a smaller size.
You see where this is going. The possibilities are almost endless.
Having worked our way through the first three steps, now it’s time to:
4. Make your decision
Now that you have plenty of options, what is your decision? Be sure to ask yourself:
will this maximize value and minimize harm?
Published as it was, the dog photo didn’t minimize harm. But did it maximize value? What decision would do both?
what are both the short-term and long-term results?
In this scenario, there’s little doubt that the short-term results were disastrous. But long term? Did the photo’s publication keep another child from suffering the same horrendous fate? There’s no way of knowing, and that’s one reason why ethical judgments are difficult to make and there’s so much disagreement among decision makers.
Finally, ask yourself:
what is my journalistic purpose? How important is it to report the information?
Why are you making the decision you are? If it’s not along the line of “this will maximize value, minimize harm, and provide the best possible short-term and long-term results” then it’s not the best decision.
All this is not to say that journalists literally walk through each of these steps when making an ethical decision. Indeed, too often they make off-the-cuff decisions without giving them enough thought, particularly without developing options. But following the above steps will help ensure that the best possible ethical decision is made.
© Joe Wisinski, 2022
Comments Welcome
Thank you, Joe!
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The purpose of this newsletter is to help journalists understand how to do real journalism and the public know how they can find news they can trust on a daily basis. It’s a simple purpose, but complicated to accomplish. I’ll do my best to make it as clear as I can in future newsletters.