My own opinion on journalist ethics

The emphasis on character development and the role of emotions makes virtue ethics in journalism superior to other ethical positions, such as deontology and teleology. A virtue ethicist is more interested in how the act or consequence affects her own character. Because of this, the virtue ethicist would argue that the more developed a person's character is, the better moral decisions they will make in the future. The most useful tool in a virtue ethicist’s arsenal is the use of the golden mean, which is a way to find the moderate solution between two extremes. Using the golden mean, a virtuous person should be drawn to the midpoint naturally.

I think it’s important for today’s journalists to strive for the golden mean. Deontology may be about one’s duty to do the right thing, but virtue ethics teaches you how to be a better journalist who continues to improve on her own personal set of ethics. Similarly, teleology may be about focusing on the consequences of an action but, sometimes, you can’t predict what the outcome may be.

In journalism, if there were no ethics, then mainstream news sources would be no different from tabloids or citizen journalism. It takes time to build credibility and without ethics, there is no credibility. In the case of people jumping from the windows of the World Trade Center on 9/11, the question was posed about whether or not to show this because there were children in the audience, but also there were some people who wanted the whole story. The New York Times, employing Aristotle’s philosophy of virtue ethics, found that the midpoint between the drama of the people falling (good for ratings) and the sensitivity of the victim (in their privacy of their last moments) would be to report on the deaths graphically or in still images, but not show the video footage.

In my own experience working at The Galveston Daily News, there are only a handful of people who write editorials — which need to be written every day. I volunteered to write an editorial, which I worked on over the weekend. After I brought it to the editorial board, enough changes were made that my original argument was lost in the shuffle. I felt that ethically, since the editorial no longer represented my viewpoint, it shouldn’t have my name in the byline. The other extreme would be to omit my name altogether. As a compromise, we put Editorial Board in the byline. I learned from this experience that the virtuous choice was to avoid taking credit for ideas that were no longer mine even at the expense of seeing my name in print.

Virtue ethics in journalism applies to audience, author and information. It’s the journalist’s job to be aware of this as they try to make the best decisions possible. For this to be achievable, journalists need to collaborate with other journalists and their editors. Until the journalist has her internal ethical guidebook, she should defer to her editor’s experience.