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!

Ethical Dilemmas:Berwyn(06)

Hi, i’m Berwyn from S203. Today I am going to talk about 3 of the seven ethical dilemmas that I have chosen. The three ethical dilemmas that I have chosen are Conflict of interest,invasion of privacy,and bias.

Firstly I would like to talk about conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest is doing something that might compromise objectivity in the reporting of truth.An example of conflict of interest is when reporting an article between two person in conflict where one would say the things that are more in their favour rather than the truth.

I chose conflict of interest as this can be seen in some of the times in articles that I have read.

The next I would like to talk about is invasion of privacy.

I chose invasion of privacy as I feel that it is one of the more important ethical dilemmas.

For journalist or reporters,invading someones privacy would make that person feel uncomfortable,also most of the time,it is considered rude for the reporter to invade one’s privacy.Invasion of privacy is when a journalist or a reporter stalks or secretly film celebrities while they are at their homes etc.

Lastly,I will talk about bias.

Being biased is when a reporter writes an article an favours a side because he or she feels that 1 side is more important because of one reason or another,An example would be when a conflict between two sides happen and you favour one of the other sides because you either know them or they bribed you. I think it is important as this affects the validity/truth of the article.

Thank you for listening.

Ethical Dilemmas : Lim Ing (03)

Introduction

Hey, I am Lim Ing and today I’ll be talking about a few Ethical Dilemmas,Plagiarism, Bias and Anonymous Sources, that are commonly faced by journalists.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is claiming one’s work as your own, taking without crediting. Its like stealing from someone. To avoid plagiarism, we should credit the authors we ‘borrow’ the materials from. This also includes downloading pictures or videos used in your work without permission. For example, if I am writing a report on the importance of history, and I google ‘why study history’, click on the first link, copy a few paragraphs from the site and paste it into my report without crediting the author or stating my source. It’s plagiarism. Lets say I drag a few pictures off another site and drop it into my report. Still plagiarism. Although plagiarism is a crime, most people do it anyway. It’s not rare for others not to care about it too. But if caught, one could lose their good reputation or may have to pay monetary penalties. Personally, I think plagiarism is a violation of Journalistic Ethics and should be avoided totally.

Bias

To be biased is to prefer or favor something. No one can be totally neutral so being biased is not an uncommon thing. For journalists, one must be as objective as possible on writing articles especially if it is on political issues. They must attempt to be as fair and impartial as possible but also should not avoid exploration and variety in the press. To every issue there are more than one side, and all sides should be represented fairly. Being biased is like writing an article about a competition and making the team you don’t support look bad because maybe you don’t like them or for other personal issues. It is vital in my opinion to try and avoid being biased but as I have said earlier, no one can be completely objective and have no preferences at all.

Anonymous Sources

Lastly, we have Anonymous Sources. It is not wrong to interview or use material from Anonymous Sources in journalism. Anonymous Sources can also be a vital source of information depending on the situations. But there are reasons why people do not want their name or title in articles or reports. It could be because they are shy or want to protect their identity, but think again. Maybe what they are saying is fake, so as a journalist, one must find more supporting information from other sources to confirm any story. For example if there is murder case and you are finding out about the details as to what actually happened. You come across a supposed friend of the victim who tells you who he or she suspects and tells you not to state his name. To confirm this information you should go to another source so that the information you have is reliable and accurate.

Conclusion

That’s all from me today, thank you for your attention!

3 Ethical Dilemmas - Ikmal

Hi, i’m Ikmal from S203. Today I am going to talk about 3 of the seven ethical dilemmas that I have chosen. The three ethical dilemmas that I have chosen are invasion of privacy, plagiarism and bias.

I think that not invading other people’s privacy is important because if a person has been in a very emotional or very tense moment, one thing that they do not certainly want is to get their name on the news. For example, imagine if a reporter is interviewing an offender of the law. If the reporter gives the name of the offender, the person’s life would be ruined because if he/she has gotten out of imprisonment, he/she would not be treated well by the public because they knew who he/she was.

I think that plagiarism should be avoided. Plagiarism is using a source for your own work or assignment but not stating the source, which is basically like stealing from someone. For example, a journalist is using something from a technology website to make an article about the latest advances in technology. After copying and editing little parts of the statement or text from the website, the journalist publishes the article...without stating where he/she got it from. That is called plagiarism.

Lastly, I think not being biased is important because if the journalist writes an article that has his/her personal opinions, he/she might make the public view something in the wrong way. He/she would give a one-sided story which could cause people to view something in the way which was from the journalist’s opinion, but not the one that is actually how something is supposed to be viewed as. The journalists should keep their opinions to themselves and be fair when reporting the news. For example, the journalist is reporting on how his/her favourite political person was not able to win the election and makes it seem like someone else was at fault.

Thank you for listening!

The 3 Ethical Dilemmas - Shaquille

Hi, I’m Shaquille  from S203 and I’m going to talk about 3, of the 7 ethical dilemmas that I’ve chosen. The first one is Plagiarism. Plagiarism is when a journalist, or author, claims and uses others’ work as their own, without giving the actual author or journalist any credit. To make it easier to understand, let’s say you are writing a report about global warming, but you didn’t have anything to work on. So you went online to search for any reliable sources that you can use. You finally found one, used it in your report, but didn’t quote where you got the information from. That’s plagiarism. It’s basically an act of stealing, but instead of stealing something, you are stealing other people’s hard work. 

Next is anonymous sources. Simply put, anonymous sources are people that you interview, but do  not want to claim credit, or do not want their names to be published. As they are anonymous, of course the information you get is not always reliable. So, you’d have to be careful and always determine its value. To give you a better understanding, pretend you’re a journalist covering a murder case. So to know more about the case, who would you go to? Probably people close to the victim like family and friends. Maybe you went to some of the victim’s friends and interviewed them. Let’s say they know something that happened between the victim and another person, the suspected killer. So, they tell you that they do not want their names to be publicised, in case the murderer would hold a grudge on them and choose his/her next target. That’s anonymous sources. 

The last one is bias. Basically, it’s human. It’s human to chose something over the other because of several reasons. For an example, you are a Manchester United fan, and you are a sports journalist covering a match between Manchester City and Manchester United. Sadly, your favourite team lost and you would have to cover that in the newspapers. So, you then try to find fault and talk trash in the papers about Man City, just because your favourite team lost to them. That’s bias. So, you should always avoid doing that and be fair to every party to prevent the wrong information being put on the papers. 

That’s all for my explanation and examples. Thank you. 

The 3 Ethical Dilemmas - JunKai

Hi, I’m Jun Kai. Today i am gonna choose a few ethical dilemmas and talk about them.

First;y, biasness is in every single human being, but when reporting, this is one of the most important dilemmas. Biasness must be needed to show people the full story, and not just a  particular side. Biasness can also can in other ways. Like, hey look, black people, they aren’t americans, why are they participating in the presidential vote? Well, what if they are americans but just with different colour, that is bias in thinking that all americans are not black. In journalism, biasness, can be like, hey ex drug convict, and I want to interview him about teens on drugs, but i should not because blah blah blah, that is bias in a way that others status or past are thought about before interviewing them.

Next, invasion of privacy. When writing about someone in situations, think before whether to include the name of the person. In situations, if the person is a rape victim or a ex drug addict, if you include the name of the person in an article, people whom know the person will start speculating about the person, and think of he or she as something else and discriminate the person.

Lastly, anonymous sources. Be wary when researching for an article online or anywhere else. If you came across some nice information but cannot verify the credibility of the author, research until you find another author who writes about the exact same thing. But what happens when you do not verify the credibility of the source. Dating back to World War 2, when the Japanese was trying to take over Singapore, an anonymous source announced that the Japanese were coming to attack through the North, so the British sent all their troops there, but in fact, they invaded through the other beaches while everybody was camping at north, which resulted in the fall of Singapore.

Three ethical dilemmas

SCRIPT

Hi I am Yeo Tzun Kai from S2-03 and I am going to talk about 3 ethical dilemmas that I have chosen.

So first one is plagiarism, plagiarism is the like using or copying someone else’s ideas or information without their permission. Also it is something like making other people’s work as your own which is somewhat like stealing from the person you copied from. For a scenario, lets say you are working on project about plants and you go on to a website and copy and paste information about plants in your project but did not give references or sources at the end of your project which is a form of plagiarism. So in order not to plagiarize other people’s work, you must state where you got the information from by citing references or sources.

Next the second one is anonymous sources, anonymous sources is basically people that you interview or get information from, don’t want to have credit nor their names to be published. The problem about keeping the person anonymous could mean that the person might give you inaccurate information but you must determine the value of the information. As a scenario, an employer from a candy company gives you information that the candy the company manufactures contains addictive drugs. This information could be true or fake so you could put the employer’s name as anonymous as when the company gets fined or sued if what the employer said was true, they may try to find out the employer that gave you the information and may harm him or her. But minor things like people giving their own opinion about something, it is all right to out in their names

Finally the third thing is commitment to accuracy, which is the amount of accuracy in your news report meaning the information you have must be accurate. A scenario is that you only get information from one person during a interview but it may be inaccurate as the person may not have told the truth and this could lead to the public to have the wrong thinking so try to ask more people to make sure the information you have gotten is accurate