What Is Ethically Irresponsible

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Ethically Responsible & Irresponsible News Reporting
When it comes to news reporting, there are certain ethical standards that journalists must maintain. In this paper there are four main points that will be covered to show the difference between what is ethically responsible and irresponsible news reporting. The points that will be discussed are: ethical responsibility to society, if deception is permissible, ethical obligations reporters have to sources, and ethical obligations to maintain privacy? For each of these questions two examples will be discussed, one that shows ethically responsible practices of a journalist and the other displaying ethically irresponsible practices.
Responsibility to Society The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has a code of ethics full "of abiding …show more content…

During the reporting, reporters were careful to inform viewers that as the story unfolded that information could change until there were official words about the incident from authorities. The reporters covering this story made sure to uphold their ethical responsibility to society by informing the community of the incident, and ensuring them that information could change as details of the story evolved (Peralta & Memmott, …show more content…

When pursuing information from a family who has just experienced a tragic event, the reporter should be sensitive to their situation and never pushy. If a reporter offer a confidential privilege to a source, you should under no circumstances give the name of your source regardless of facing jail time or not. Of course, it is not a law that they must maintain this confidentiality, it is a matter of strong ethical practices. Reporters still have to risk going to prison for not giving up their sources, of course, until a nationwide shield law can be set in place. (Duprey,

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