When a blog post about ethical issues in journalism was first brought up, my mind immediately diverted to last semester's fiasco dealing with The Red & Black's then-editor-in-chief, Daniel Burnett. As an editor at the newspaper at the time when Burnett was asked to resign, it was a turbulent couple of days. I had a front row ticket to the entire affair and making the decisions the staff had to make were not easy.
It was one of the few times as a student journalist that we were all given the opportunity to learn firsthand the responsible and ethical thing to do in such a scenario.
Ethically, it was only right to publish the story. This is an issue that is breached on a daily basis with the newspaper: "Why do you guys print crimes and mishaps of fellow students?"
And the only is answer is that news is news, especially stories involving students in prominent positions on campus, which certainly applied in the Burnett affair. If any other member of a student organization — be it student-athletes, SGA presidents or Red & Black editors — that holds a prominent position on campus, that news is important news for the student body to know.
Sure, negative news gets tiresome.
But not publishing newsworthy material causes even greater problems.
Zach, I agree with you post on running the story about the resignation. It was the right thing on all accounts from the Red & Black and Daniel himself to comment. I think it would have hurt the R&B's credibility if he was the exception to the rule.
ReplyDeleteI like that you chose this story, because I remember reading it in the Red & Black when it was published. I think it was definitely the right thing to do to run the story, because the Red & Black has run stories about students' negative behavior on campus, and I dont think this situation should have been treated any differently. It would have been an ethical issue had they not run the story just because he was the editor-in-chief.
ReplyDeleteI also like that you chose this story because I remember reading it in the R&B and I was completely shocked and saddened at its content. But I remember being happy and somewhat proud of our school newspaper to go ahead and print the gritty stories.
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