The Importance of Ethics

        As journalists, we have certain responsibilities to the public that we must abide by if we are to remain the "watchdogs" of the country. These responsibilities include Truthfulness, fairness, privacy, and responsibility. Alone they are all valiant qualities, but when combined, they form the cornerstone of good journalism and what it takes to be a trustworthy journalist. Let's examine each of these qualities. While truthfulness may seem like a given, it should not be taken for granted. The public trusts us to let them know what is happening in their community, in their nation, and around the world. Because we have this enormous duty to them, we must ensure that everything we produce is factual, unexaggerated, and straight-forward. Sources cannot be made up, quotes cannot be edited or paraphrased, audio and video cannot be doctored. When this happens, and the public finds out, they lose faith in not only the journalist or organization, but in the media as a whole.
        When it comes to fairness, it means that we must give equal coverage and opportunity to all parties with a stake in the item being produced. Incidents that this can be applied to have become commonplace in recent times, for example giving bipartisan coverage during important political events, incidents between the police and civilians, and incidents including race. If we only show one side of a story, we may unintentionally create bias among the people who view or read our publications. As journalists, it is our duty to remain impartial and to cover all sides of a story so that we can perpetuate fairness in the media.
        Furthermore, maintaining the privacy of our sources is extremely important. If the safety or well-being of a source would be comprised if their identity was revealed, it is imperative that we keep that information guarded. This accomplishes two things, it encourages the source to trust us and to remain as a provenance of information, and it emboldens others to become our sources as well.
        Finally, we have responsibility. Though we provide information to the masses, journalists are the servants of our viewer/readers. We aren't just ethical journalists because we want to be, we are because we must. It is our duty to provide the American people, and the people across the globe who may be watching, with information that they can trust and use to better themselves, their community, and their lives.

        The issue arises when journalists shirk their responsibilities to the public and their craft by acting unethically. One such journalist is Johann Hari. Hari was a correspondent and foreign contributor for The Independent, a British newspaper, and The Huffington Post until it was discovered, in 2011, that he had been using quotes from other journalists' interviews. Quotes he would claim to have gotten during an interview, for example his interview with late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, actually came from pieces published by fellow journalists. He claimed that he took these quotes because the interviewee wasn't speaking clearly on his recordings, and it would be easier to have the reader surmise what he or she is saying by pulling quotes from other journalists that may have asked similar questions. His explanation was that he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong because he had never taken formal journalism classes. In the aftermath of the incident, he was suspended from the paper but after being invited back decided not to return to writing for the paper and he is going to concentrate on writing a book instead. Hopefully the book will be all original material.

        The journalist who has spent the longest amount of time behind bars for not reveling a source was Josh Wolf. Wolf was covering a protest in San Francisco California in which some of the protestors were vandalizing property. Though Wolf didn't videotape the vandalism being committed by the protestors, he was able to get footage of police using excessive force by choking protestors and by threatening civilians with stun guns. During the federal trial that ensued, prosecutors subpoenaed Wolf for his footage, which showed the identities of some of the protestors, but he refused. He was held in contempt of court and put in jail until he decided to turn over the tapes to the federal prosecutors. He remained in jail for 226 days (roughly 7.5 months), the longest time any journalist has ever spent behind bars for not revealing a source. The previous record was 168 days held by freelancer Vanessa Leggett. Wolf was released after posting the video online and did not have to testify in the case. His unedited video footage of the police brutality incident is below.