Ethical Dilemmas- Jiawen

Out of the seven ethical dilemmas journalists face, I feel that the three most important ones are invasion of privacy, plagiarism and bias. 

Invasion of privacy:

Invasion of privacy can be not asking permission to take a photo of someone, or revealing information that they had said even though they had made it clear that they do not want whatever they said to be reported, it can be also going somewhere that they were not given permission to, like someone else’s house. Examples of invasion of privacy can be found in many different ways, for example a journalists is interviewing someone, and that person made it clear that he or she does not want any of her details or whatever he or she said to be reported anywhere. If the journalist ignores that and continues to report the information, it is considered as invasion of privacy. Another scenario is when the journalist is crossing the line too much, like taking pictures without permission, barging into someone’s house without permission just to get an interview, or even taking things without permission as forms of evidence.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is copying something that does not belong to you, and showing it to others as your own. As a journalist, it is always best to personally seek for information and not just quoting it from whatever source you got it from, especially the internet. For example, the journalist read from an online source that this CEO of a company said something and the journalist wants to quote that, but the journalist cannot just take the quote straight out of the internet as the journalist did not interview the CEO personally. 

Bias: 

Bias is taking sides, not just when two parties pitch against one another, but it can be also when they did not mention anyone else at all. For example, company A organized an event, and the organizer, when interviewed, says that the event turned out to be very successful and they look forward to having more events as successful as that. At the end of the report, the journalist gives his or her own opinion like ‘Company B would have done a better job at organizing the event.’ Even though company A did not mention company B at all.