Three of Seven Ethical Dilemmas (Marcus)

Marcus Chan S2-05

Script for 7 Ethical Dilemmas Journalists Face

Hello everyone, my name is Marcus from S2-05 and I’ll be talking about 3 of the seven ethical dilemmas journalists encounter as they go about doing their job. Firstly, I’ll be talking about Invasion of Privacy. Many journalists, when doing extensive coverage on a certain person may tend to delve too deep into the person’s personal life. For example, journalists may follow someone extensively and perhaps to a beach where they might want to suntan. The journalist may then take photos of that person and this could a gray area because on one hand the beach is a public place and it could be argued that it is not an invasion of privacy because they have decided to suntan in an area where it is accessible and obviously beaches are places where we tend to shed more skin. However, on another hand, the person could argue that the photos taken were suggestive or portrayed him or her in a bad way and it was the fault of the journalists who took those pictures. 

So next. I’ll be talking about being bias. People tend to be suggestive and the way they read or see certain things can shape their perception into a bias towards or against someone. As journalists it is crucial that we investigate both sides of the story so that we can have reasons as to why a person did such a thing and why someone would have reacted in that way. An example could be in the elections. Since Straits Times is a government owned newspaper, they could feature more of the PAP’s candidates and make them out 

Finally on to the last part, a commitment to accuracy. Journalists always want to get the scoop first as they will then be able to publish before anyone else. An example would be a journalist rushing to a crime scene and interviewing a person who was caught up in it. The person interviewed could say that he heard hundreds of shots being fired when in actual fact perhaps the criminal only had one gun with a few bullets. The journalist could believe him and publish it quickly and obviously something with more action and shots fired in that context would be more interesting. 

So that’s the end of this video and I hope everything wasn’t too boring for you guys.