Three Ethical Dilemmas (Douglas)

     Hey there, I’m Douglas from 203, and I will be talking about three ethical dilemmas that journalists face. 

     First up is being bias. Bias is prejudice against someone or something. It is natural for humans to be biased. There will be many perspectives of a event that different journalists will see and being bias will affect that. Sometimes, the full story is not revealed while one side of the story is released, which may result in the readers having a wrong idea of the story. Also, this may in one way or the other give offense to someone or displease a particular group of people. For example, a journalist favours a certain brand of television sets. However, there is another brand of television sets which is equally good. In order to make the journalist’s favoured brand look better, the journalist describes more about his favoured brand while leaving the other equally good brand with a mediocre description. Also, the journalist may be swayed by his own opinions towards the news story, resulting in a biased and inaccurate story.

     The second dilemma is anonymous sources. For the sake of the news scoop, journalists may obtain their information from unknown and unverified sources. As such, the quality and integrity of the news would not be good. For example, a news leak of a certain technological advancement may happen through the internet, but it is not confirmed by the rumoured makers of the technology, thus proving that the technological advancement is from an anonymous source.

     The third dilemma is invasion of privacy. In order to dig in deeper to a certain news scoop, journalists may attempt to trespass into private property for extra news. For example, if an male actor was rumoured to be with a female actress, the journalist may trespass into the house of the male actor to get more information on this topic. This would be disrespectful to both parties.

That is all for today. Thank you for listening!