In L.C.’s first blog, Media Ethics, she describes what the “real tools” that are used for ethical decision-making. She says, “The real tools… come from personal experiences and personal values. The hypothetical scenarios in the readings are useful in practicing putting your self in those tricky situations.” I could not agree with her more! To add on to her comments, I feel these hypothetical scenarios that we read only help if the reader is willing to listen to and actually consider another belief system.
My Offensive Line Coach, Kevin Bolis, once told me, “Not everyone is coachable.” Even though he was talking about football when he said this, I believe his words of wisdom occur throughout life with the ethical decisions we make everyday. I say this because a person’s ethical beliefs can be self-centered, they read these scenarios but the reader is not fazed. Their belief system runs only though their personal gain, that my friends is an “non-coachable” person.
Personal experiences especially play a part in finding ethical beliefs. One can say that they would act a certain way in a certain situation, but when you are actually in that situation that is when your true colors come out. And not everyone is going to do the right thing their first time around, but that is why God gave us tomorrow, to fix from yesterday.
The second blog that I am going to discuss is Boston Julien’s 2nd blog, Media Ethics- Handling Secret information. In this particular blog Julien discusses his thoughts and thought process in handling top-secret information. He believes that one must look over a few things before releasing secret information, the level of secrecy, who would this information impact, and could this information allow harmful use towards others. I think that this thought process is perfect with handling secret information, so I ask you this, “Do you reveal how you came across your secret information?”
Further into the blog, Julien describes a case about a newspaper in Uganda, which printed some photos that raised some questions. The photo was of group of men, dressed in Ugandan Army uniforms, that had a woman pinned down while they were shaving her genitalia area with scissors. Julien states, “my decision would be a mix of Mills Utility principle and Bok's ethical decision making.” First he says he would have to think long and hard about the jail time that he might face for releasing this photo. But on the contrary he also states that releasing these pictures could ultimately put a stop to such unethical behavior. To rebuttal, I feel that the jail time is irrelevant in the thought process. This is a story that has to be told, no matter what. With this case in particular, the Ugandan Army men are supposed to be protecting the people. This type of action coming from army men that are supposed to be protecting the people is unacceptable and it needs to be exposed. Toward the end of his comments, Julien then sides with the picture being printed, saying that he would try and present the picture in a way that could breed a positive outcome.
Blog number four asked us to redefine the meaning of Public Relations. I decided to read over Jon’s blog, Redefining Public Relations & Giving it a Facelift and in reading, it was noticed that Jon and I had a lot of the same thoughts on the definition. Jon said that the definition of Public Relations:
“helping an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”
…was too vague, too simplistic; and I said the definition was lacking words, and that it was too bland. It needed a pick me up.
Jon picks the definition apart throughout his blog, he starts off saying that the definition doesn’t work because public relations is not “aiding and abetting in the mutual adaptation of publics and organizations.” He also adds that the definition should mention how public relations promote the mission of an organization. I agree, throughout my blog I say that the definition needs a section that states how public relations provide an organization with exposer to their audience.
He completed his discussion with his new and improved definition of Public Relations. Jon says the definition should be as fallowed:Public relations attempts to aid an organization and its publics by providing support and communicating the message of an organization in a manner and fashion that is both appropriate and in keeping with the PRSA’s (Public Relations Society of America) Code of Ethics.
I think that his definition is a good one. I would have worded it a little different but through it all Jon’s definition tells you exactly what public relations does. Personally I liked the definition that was used in 1978. That particular definition said that:
Public Relations is the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action, which will serve both the organization and the public interests.”
Both definitions though are 100% better than the definition that is currently up. Hell, I don’t think that you any worse then the definition that’s already up.
Our fifth blog assignment was an emotional story. The story behind the article was about a 13 year old girl who committed suicide, and it appeared that it was due to cyber-bullying. This article however was also about journalist Steve Polkin, who covered the story for the Suburban Journals for St. Charles County, and his choice not to release the names of the cyber bullies (who were actually her neighbors). In Lucy’s blog, The Son Also Rises, Lucy defends Mr. Polkin, saying he was ethically correct for not printing the bullies names in his story. Her defense is based off of a line in the article “police, prosecutors and the FBI said they could find no law had been broken”. Lucy believes that since no law had been broken, then no name should be released. She puts up a great argument throughout her story and defends Polkin well; unfortunately I have a different opinion.
To start, Mr. Polkin is a writer, he is not a prosecutor, and so stating these names in an article is not illegal or wrong in any way. He covered a story about a little girl who just committed suicide, and there was a ton of evidence saying that the suicide was caused because of cyber-bullying. I agree with Lucy, the Internet is the Wild, Wild West, but there is a new Sherriff in town and his name is Stevey Polkin. Polkin had a chance to nip this cyber-bullying in the butt, and he blew it like Tom Brady’s wide receivers in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl. What the neighbors did was ethically wrong, and they should have been called out on it. Sorry Lucy, but Mr. Polkin failed journalism.
The fifth question that I chose to pick was also in the 5th blog assignment. The final question in the assignment asked us if the social networking sites should monitor cyber-bullying. I studied both, Liz’s Media Ethics- Blog Privacy & Cyber Bullying and Femi’s The Privacy Debacle, and found that they had the same thought on monitoring social network sites. Both Liz and Femi say that it is impossible for social networking sites to be monitored, and I cannot argue with them there. There is no way that social networking sites can monitor everyone’s posts and comments, it would take too much man power but also all the time that would be wasted.
However Facebook does have a tab on the side of the post button that allows readers to mark the post as inappropriate. So those who should be monitoring the social networking sites are the “friends,” of the site. Ignoring the problem is almost as bas as being the problem. As Lucy said in her blog on this assignment, the Internet is the Wild, Wild West; almost anything goes out there. But it is our jobs to monitor it our selves and open our mouths when something is not right.
In conclusion it was nice having discussion groups, and talking about our class readings. You get a better sense of where the person is coming from. However I feel that our views on ethics, as a nations is very poor. It seems that that everyone is out for them selves anymore. I always like to finish my essays with a quote so I will leave you with this Socrates quote.
“Not life, but good life is to be chiefly valued” - Socrates
Thank you… I’m OUT!
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