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"Poytn(me)r in the right direction"

Ethics of Journalism.. a topic I have problems with.

Most issues involving ethics are focused on how the readers and financial investors are affected. When it comes to media junkets and freebes I personally would have no problem accepting gifts. Just because a company treated me to a nice island vacation to report on the tourist economy in the Virgin Islands does not mean that I will not write a bad report. If journalists allow gifts and opportunities to alter their objectivity, then yes credibility becomes an issue. I follow a more teleological approach to ethics. If the story is factual, accurate and objective... what does it matter how you went about obtaining the story? Conversations with journalists regarding ethics makes me cringe. In my mind I see a bunch of scholars, too lazy to make it in the reporting world, chastising real writers over unobtainable dimensions of objectivity.

Since the present media takes form as a corporate conglomerate, how can a journalist be criticized for buying and interview or receiving a free cup of joe?

I have studied several approaches to resolving ethical problems that arise in journalism. Most methods require involved analysis and other feather in your cap macaroni type of processes... When a journalist is on the job working on deadline.. issues arise and the journalist does not have time to puff on a cuban and discuss over a brandy.

As my mother often says, "We all shit in the same pot, and in the end it all smells the same." Journalism ethicists can toil over the guidelines of credibility.. I choose the right to accept vacations and dinners.

Website reading:

Basically what I took away from the additional reading was optimism. Journalism is not just print anymore. Journalism does not require words. In my mind, journalism isn't even 'new' news. Journalism is spreading the word, telling others what they have the right to know. All this professionalism yadda yadda makes me cringe. Spread the word spread the knowledge.

I like the idea of online news competing with television. The Anna Nicole Smith 24-7 coverage last year on most major news networks justifies the rise of online news.

I checked out some of the animated news links. I really wish I knew flash or some other animation program to work with that realm of journalism. I feel that jumping on the news junkie bandwagon is difficult these days and ill-informed. Online news provides readers with an opportunity to understand the history of the war in Iraq or even a visual of how a hurricane forms.

Although there will always be critics of journalist practices.. I feel that at the rate journalism is changing, those old bourbon swirling farts won't be able to keep up.

Election:

GOP and the Media

Well new polls are in and Ron Paul looks to be in fourth place in the New Hampshire primary. The Nation suggests that if Paul received equal media representation then he might become a serious national contender for the GOP candidacy. I recognize the name Ron Paul and associate him with libertarian values, however I do not know much about his policy beyond that. I went to check out NYTimes politics page on the candidates, and in the right corner there are faces of GOP and Democrat candidates. I understand that the Times cannot put every candidate on the opening page, and I assumed the candidates were chosen based on alphabetical order. Not the case, Thompson's name appeared but not Paul. Although my quick net surfing is a large generalization, but it proves my point. The media is doing a horrible job reporting on the candidates. Guiliani appears in countless headlines from New Hampshire, even though he has basically said that he is not focusing much of his campaign on the early primaries.

Consider even the coverage between Thompson and Paul. Thompson is not contending well in NH and his only claim to fame is Law and Order. I also know that Thompson has a fairly young wife and lost a daughter some years ago. Why do I know these things, yet know nothing about Paul? I think the answer is that Paul does not care to play these personal issues during the campaign.