“What does it mean to be ethical?” If you are ethical, you are fair, trustworthy, and have good morals. Reporters usually have to follow a code of ethics that the company they work for has already established. A code of ethics is a list of moral guidelines that journalists should follow in order to be responsible members of the news community. The qualities of an ethical person and reporter are that you are fair, honest, and do what is right. To handle the situation that is presented in the lesson, an ethical person would explain to their friend that they would never do anything to get them in trouble or harm them in anyway and that being safe is more important. Then, they should go and tell their friend’s parents what happened and explain that they were only doing it out of love for their friend and to protect them from any harm.
I came to this conclusion because telling a stranger your address online is very dangerous and you never know what can happen. If I were in this situation, I would rather have my friend stay safe and possibly punished for a while then to see anything bad happen to them as a result of an insignificant mistake. For me, this ethical dilemma wasn’t very hard to solve because if you know what’s right, the answer comes naturally.
Ethics applies to journalism, because without it, journalists would be writing articles that are definitely not true or invade a person’s privacy. Journalists have to be honest with themselves, with the companies they work for, and with the people that are viewing their articles or television broadcasts. The code of ethics for each company requires its workers to be fair and make the best decisions when writing. Just like people in everyday life encounter ethical dilemmas and have to make difficult decisions, journalists do to. An example of an ethical dilemma that a journalist might encounter is deciding to give away personal information about a celebrity in a tabloid magazine. Would you want to write personal information that no one would want exposed for the money you would receive, or would you be a kind person and leave it out of the magazine?
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