Oxymoron—‘Journalism Ethics’

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Taking the oxymoron out of ‘journalism ethics’

By Ted Pease

When I tell people that I’m teaching media ethics this quarter, some laugh. One colleague was uncharacteristically speechless, as if she couldn’t catch her breath.

I don’t know if it’s the concept of “journalism ethics” that these people find oxymoronic (like “sensitive male”), or if they think it’s funny that I’m the teacher.

Such reactions to the whole idea of ethical journalism reflect a kind of pervasive cynicism — Jimmy Carter might call it “malaise” — that infects the information age and threatens to afflict social institutions far beyond the press and mass media. The reaction is like that of movie viewers who giggle at car crashes and Tarentino shoot-outs: they’d rather laugh than cry.

Those who practice journalism and who study it, however, spend quite a lot of time grappling with ethical issues and the morality play of daily events. (I can hear the giggling now.) There are few professions that require such fine balancing acts and demanding decision-making minute-by-minute and day-to-day.

That is why journalism schools require their students to study ethics and to try to develop from their own values systems ethical yardsticks to help them gauge how they will make decisions in the heat of covering breaking news or creating vehicles to sell a client’s product once they enter the work force.

And so, on Thursday evening, 60 or so students crammed the auditorium in the Animal Science Building on campus to start building ethical yardsticks and taking the measure of their proposed profession. Only one of them commented afterward that it seemed somehow appropriate that we’d be meeting in a room that used to house dairy cows.

One of the things I asked them to do as we got under way was to write down adjectives they associated with the term “journalist” or “reporter.” And, for these students, the results illustrate the kind of schizophrenia that many associated with the journalistic profession carry around.

Some students were already defensive about the field: “unsung heroes,” one woman wrote; “they aren’t recognized for the good they do.” Another listed this string of attributes: “uneducated, sensationalist, nosy, pushy, immoral, idealistic, watch dogs, poorly paid, starving, 1st Amendment-hide behind, unethical.”

Some others: “fact hound, annoying, overbearing, witty, good writer, good thinker”; “talkative, outgoing, friendly, arrogant, obnoxious, nosy, careless, sloppy, busybody, shallow, aggressive, invading, rude, truth-seeking, pry into people’s lives/business, self-righteous, liberal, too honest/dishonest.”

On of my favorite lists, from a junior, included “writer, searcher, destroyer, pressure, fairness, accuracy, balance, busy, stress, anxiety, time pressure, no family life, no friends.”

Such mixed emotions about journalism are an artifact of changing attitudes toward the field, and toward the role of the press and the mass media. And it is not surprising that students considering careers in these fields feel so ambivalent. The press is often its own worst enemy.

Consider just a few recent examples: ABC News’ use of hidden cameras in the Food Lion case. The media spectacle surrounding the murder of “tiny beauty queen” JonBenet Ramsey. The Ennis Cosby murder. The Dallas Morning News’ unprecedented scooping of itself by publishing Timothy McVeigh’s “confession” to the Oklahoma City bombing on the Internet just hours before the newspaper itself hit the streets. And let’s not even murmur the dreadful initials “OJ.”
Gregory Kane, writing for the Baltimore Sun, recently observed, “Somewhere along the line, many Americans relegated the media to a notch on the morality scale only slightly above that of child molesters. Judging by the way some media have covered the murder of Ennis Cosby, we deserve it.”

Substitute for the Cosby case almost any other sensational news event, and the assessment is sadly the same.

A day or so after the Dallas Morning News reported that Timothy McVeigh had confessed to bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City during the day in order to get everyone’s attention with a high body count, I was having lunch with some journalists. This group, whose newsroom experience ranged from six to 18 years, was horrified by the newspaper’s “scoop” and the cynical way it reported the story — electronically scooping itself on the Internet to avoid an almost-certain court injunction against reporting the alleged “confession.”

I wish non-journalists could hear these kinds of conversations that reporters and editors have every day, agonizing over what they know and what they can and should tell their readers and viewers.

“I believe journalists are intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated and generally motivated by a sense of fairness,” a copy editor friend once said during one of these kinds of discussions. “Reporting is honest, wonderfully creative work that forces people to be engaged in their world and communities. Few fields place an equal premium on truth, honesty and fairness.”

But, like my ethics students, most Americans don’t hear these kinds of conversations, and see only the most sensationalistic results of journalism, the kinds of stories and practices that make most in the profession cringe.

So it is no surprise that the students in my media ethics class feel a little schizy, sheepish, even apologetic, about their prospective careers. “I think that no matter what, behind a journalist’s values and motivations is a sense of greed,” one student wrote in response to a question about what journalists value. “The average person who seeks truth does it for truth itself, while a journalist seeks it for his career.”

What’s at stake in this conversation is not just the development of ethical yardsticks for future journalists, but the larger impact such attitudes toward the press have on the larger society and its other institutions. Cynicism about the press and mass media, and how they portray events, inevitably spawns wider cynicism and disengagement in society, a loss of community involvement.

Over the next 10 weeks, on Thursday evenings, 60 students and I will grapple with these issues and try to take the oxymoron out of “journalism ethics,” and restore some of the sense of mission and commitment to do good that led many of us into journalism in the first place. Stay tuned.

(This column first appeared in the Logan (Utah) Herald-Journal on 3/30/97.)