Again, please, a cite from somebody who is not you would be helpful, especially since I’m getting the sense that this notion that journalists should have no sides in a war is of somewhat recent vintage and selectively enforced at best.
I don’t think anyone told Ernie Pyle that he should get the Wehrmacht’s point of view in his reporting. Is he any less a journalist for the work that he did do?
I also don’t recall an awful lot of pro-Taliban coverage pre- or post-9/11.
BTW, I did have to take some journalism ethics training some time back - and I recall nobody telling me that I had to let soldiers die if it jeopardized my objectivity. So why would Jennings and Wallace think they would have to do that? What in their mind would cause them to twist the ethical standards of their craft into something so perverted?
It’s like asking for a cite that an attorney is supposed to defend his client, but here you go.
Objectivity is the first duty of any reporter. Anyone who wants to allege an exception for wartime needs to offer up a cite that such a loophole is widely recognized or taught.
You’re confusing objectivity with journalistic fairness (“getting both sides”). They’re not exactly the same. Good journalism should try to include a presentation all viewpoints, (and it’s not for a journalist to decide which side is “right”), but objectivity doesn’t necessarily mean actively seeking those viewpoints out. It just means mainitaining a neutrality about what the reporter does see.
You got shitty training then.
Because that is their professional and ethical obligation.
Cite that they “twisted” those standards? Cite that it’s “perverted?” Where did you ever get this notion that journalists are suppposed to take sides?
What does that have to do with the issue? If you’re saying that standard should be applied to war, then reporters would have to apply that standard equally to both ides. Are you suggesting that reporters should give away American troop positions or warn about ambushes to the other side? If not, then you’re saying reporters should actively take sides, and thus, not be objective.
So there is some notion that the duties of a journalist do not give them license to endanger troops or other people - indeed, this was the consensus of the board when the name of Valerie Plame was published. So why would Wallace and Jennings decide that their duties required them to hold their tongues while soldiers got killed?
These aren’t easy questions - these ethical dilemmas aren’t constructed to be nice and simple. But the answers they reveal tell a lot about the person revealing them - and what it said about Jennings and Wallace wasn’t particularly nice to watch.
It also occurs to me that the “limitation of harm” standard in reporting is not really applicable in Wallce/Jennings ambush hypothetical, because that scenario did not involve a decision about what to report, but about actively trying to affect what’s being reported.
You’ll have to define “ethical citizenship.” IMO, A journalist’s obligation to report objectively (and not to interfere with what’s being reported) IS ethical citizenship.
So if a journalist is interviewing a priest, and the priest rapes an alter boy in front of the journalist, the journalist should do nothing to prevent the rape. His job is to record reality as objectively as possible, not to influence it or lie about it. It’s a prime directive thing. You don’t interfere.
He could write a STORY about the rape, but actually trying to STOP the rape would be a violation of journalistic ethics, and therefore a violation of civic ethics.
Ethical idealism aside, I think it would be illegal for the reporter to do nothing. In fact, he would be an active participant in the making of child pornography. I suppose that if journalistic integrity actually bcomes an illegal act, it’s no longer ethical, but I don’t know enough about these kinds of nuances and contrived ethical dilemmas to say for sure how a journalism prof would regard it.
So this is an instance where the ethical thing to do would be to allow the rapist to proceed and report the story later, except there’s this wrongheaded law that forces the journalist to do something unethical…to interfere with the story?
Anyway, how is this dilemna more contrived than the other one (Viet Cong ambush of American soliders)?
If a journalist is writing a story about homelessness, and finds a homeless guy passed out in the rain, would it be unethical for the journalist to call 911 and get the guy to a hospital?
Not an apt analogy, IMO. A priest raping an alter boy is clearly and illegal (an unethical) act. An ambush during wartime is clearly not an illegal (or unethical) act. The two situations are not comparable.
I am glad to see that you understand the limits of your understanding on this issue, considering that earlier in the thread you were posing as something of an expert in the subject.
Anyway, perhaps you would like to retract your comment about my “shitty” training. It certainly wasn’t comprehensive, but it was good training led by some of Pittsburgh’s leading journalists.
It was needed because we were staffers for a university newspaper that published four times a week, 25,000 copies per edition, and even when I was there handled ad revenues worth millions of dollars. It was easily one of the biggest university student newspapers in the country, and the potential for abuse in an enterprise that big was immense.
I never posed as an expert, but I did grow up as the son of a political reporter, so I do know something about how they define their own ethical standards.
Absolutely not. If you were ever taught that it was ethical to interfere with a story (barrring the extreme exception in which it would be illegal not to), then you got shitty training. I suspect you were taught no such thing.
Sure - that particular question was left unexamined. I suspect it was for Jennings and Wallace as well - and I also suspect that is why Jennings reacted initially one way when asked the question and Wallace another.
So, the problem is that it’s illegal to not interfere with a rapist. Stupid laws, forcing journalists to violate their ethics.
Fine.
What about my scenario about the homeless guy suffering from hypothermia? Would it be unethical for the journalist to call 911 and get the guy to a hospital? Would it be unethical for a journalist to help a low functioning single mother apply for food stamps and medicare?