Ethics

In general ethical reasoning can take many forms.

Principal reasoning assumes that you are not acting ethically if you do something simply because you have been told to do it or because thats what everyone does. To help journalists make ethical decisions, ethicists have adapted a model or moral reasoning.

The Potter Box is a model that has four basic elements.
1. Appraising the situation - collect all the facts from a variety of sources.
2. Identifying values - consider your values, your community values, your news organizations values, and your nations values.
3. Appealing to ethical principles - look at the ethical decisions such as kant's categorical imperative.
4. Choosing loyalities - consider to who you owe a certain loyalty to such as your readers, your sources, and your organization.

Usually there is no one clear answer to an ethical dilemna but these elements of the Potter Box can help you make a decision effectively and quickly.

After reading the chapter I learned three guidelines of ethical problems.
1. Be free of obligations to anyone or to any interest but the truth.
2. Be fair
3. Remember good taste

The book then outlines some specific problems you could face, all of which I thought were really interesting:
*Deceit - For the absolutist, the answer is simple - never! But for the rest of us, the answer isn't so easy.
* Conflict of Interest- Reporting generally assumes that reporters start out with no point of view but you should determine what constitutes a conflict of interest.
* Friendship - Sometimes reporters get too close to their sources and sometimes that isn't too good.
*Payola- Journalists may not accept payment for writing a story from anyone other then their employment.
* Freebies- Most news organizations have rules against accepting freebies such as accepting gifts, so you should learn your code of conduct at your news organization.
* Checkbook journalism- Another problem for journalists is deciding if it is ethical to pay a source for an exclusive story.
* Participation in the news- You also should make sure to let your boss know which organizations you belong to incase you end up participating in the news.
*Advertising pressure - Advertising can sometimes dictate what must or must not be printed.
*Invasion of Privacy - Basically it comes down to a matter of ethics and the public's right to know. Is secrecy better than disclosure?
*Witholding information- As a journalist are you ever off duty? Sometimes the press witholds information to protect its reporters and to maintain acess to news sources.
* Plagiarism- No one wants you to use his or her work as if it were your own. So don't do it!