[Editorial]  Journalism and Ethics

September 7, 2011

If you take one point away from Valerie Wells' cover story this week, let it be this: Mainstream media have agendas that don't always serve the needs of the citizens who rely on it. As more and more news outlets fall under the control of media giants and entertainment networks, the need to seek out and tell hard truths often falls by the wayside in favor of double-digit profits.

We've never been big believers in false objectivity. There are not always two equal sides to a story, and sometimes there are more than two. Often, people are wrong and act badly, and no amount of countering opinions changes that. Every reporter has opinions, and even when they attempt to present a completely "objective picture," their opinions will come through. As news consumers, however, our need to ferret out why certain stories are promoted over others, or why stories are spun the way they are becomes imperative. To simply take one report and believe it with no further investigation does our democracy a grave injustice.

When a media source operates under the mandate of greater shareholder profits, something's got to give. Too often, it's the hard stuff: investigative and ethical journalism. Profit-driven journalism leans toward the lowest common denominator, often leaving readers short-changed on context and details. If a story leaves you confused and feeling patronized the blame lies in the story, not you. Corporate news allows for lapses of good judgment, such as letting rabid and ugly commentaries stand because it drives page views. It uses one set of words to describe some groups, and another set for a favored demographic—thugs and gangs, for example, instead of teens and students. And it favors the voices that make the most noise over the voices of reason, often passing off bombastic press releases as news stories without a second thought.

It's the little ethical slides that break reader's trust. Lapses such as allowing a story written by an advertiser to appear without labeling it as "advertising," or allowing reporters to do email interviews, or not fact-checking stories (or publicly retracting and apologizing for errors)—steadily creep into a readers' subconscious until they're not sure where news stops and fiction begins. Worse, they begin to believe that it's OK and that there's nothing they can do about it.

Lapses in ethics are not OK. We can demand better, and we can strive for media literacy. Media has never been above subterfuge; imperfect human beings populate newspapers and TV stations. But we live in an unprecedented time when "news" is ubiquitous. It's too easy to find a dozen stories that agree with our biased viewpoints, but when we begin to believe that only stories that agree with our bias are "good" and everything else is wrong, that's a problem.

It takes work to understand our complex world, just as it takes work to maintain a democracy. Government "of the people" takes people to fully participate. The fourth estate demands discerning readers. Neither is a spectator sport.

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