Ethics of Journalism

I'm sure most of you, now being freshmen in college, have written a research report. Doing this required finding facts with cited sources. But have you ever heard of someone just making up a bunch of things? Well there have been people in the past who have. Two who are most famous are Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair.

Both of these men worked for big companies. Glass for The New Republic and Blair for The New York Times. Both men made up stories with fake people and fake places. The editors took a while to actually realize what they were doing. When they did, both men were out of a job in the end and both companies were hurt in many ways.

The movie "Shattered Glass" was based on Stephen Glass and they go through his story. When he is caught, his editor brings him to a place where he wrote one of his stories on and it was nothing like he described. Glass went crazy and his editor had no choice but to fire him. 

Both of these men relate to the idea of ethics in the media today. Ethics are defined as a "branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions." In Blair's situation, he had no self-regulation with no responsibility for ethical conduct. Blair ended up resigning, but it was said that half of the 73 articles he wrote were fabrications and sometimes even had plagiarism.

Here are two links. The first is a scene from Shattered Glass and the second is an actually interview with Stephen Glass.
I feel like there are some who do make up some things and not all editors are able to ever find it. It's not always easy for writers to keep up their great work and use all real sources and stories. Knowing this, they probably do make a few things up even if it isn't anything major.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p6s9L1SM8U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1fcF9LLjYE&feature=related


In Media Ethics there are many different theories that we covered in class, but a few stood out to me. Immanuel Kant said that something is ethical or it's not. If it's universally right for one, than it is for all. But I don't know if I actually agree with this. Some things can be looked at as both. I also thought that the justice and veil of ignorance theory made a lot of sense. You're forced to make decisions about the society. But when you make them, you are completely blind. This was believed to force people to make ethical and right decisions. In many ways I agree with this because people wouldn't have the chance to make any unethical decisions which may lead to a more civilized society.

I would like to see what everyone else thinks. What theory do you think is most compelling and why? Also, do you think that there are more like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair in the print media today?

Thanks guys