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Four journeys with four journalists concerning ethics By Callie Ehmann and Harper Harris

Ethics have been taught for over 2,500 years, dating to pre-biblical times. Ethics and morals are integral in everything that humans do, especially in journalism and conveying the truth. Ethics mean different things to different people, but they all focus on a set of moral principles the human race has decided are correct.

​​These are four different stories from journalists about their journey with ethics in their careers.

Dr. Kristie Bunton, TCU's Bob Schieffer College of Communication Dean

Dean Kristie Bunton Ph. D. has taught journalism ethics for 35 years. (Photo courtesy TCU )

The dean of Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University, Kristie Bunton Ph.D., said that ethics is an important pillar of journalism.

“It means doing the right thing, acting with integrity and telling people who need to know your stories in a respectful fashion,” Bunton said.

Before becoming a dean at TCU, Bunton worked as a journalist, and she was faced with ethical dilemmas often. Most of these dilemmas were based around photos or story ideas.

“I had a story that involved a small business. Something had gone wrong in that small business… I reported a story, explaining it,” Bunton said. “The next day, the phone rang, and it was the owner of the small business, and she was in tears. But she was also very angry.”

Bunton was faced with an ethical dilemma. She needed to report the facts about this small business but did not want to ruin their reputation nor put them out of business.

“I did not know what to do, I felt powerless, and I felt terrible for her,” Bunton said, “From that moment on, I thought, how am I supposed to know how to make this decision ethically? When we covered it, even though all we did was tell the truth fairly, we magnified it. And I didn't know how to deal with that. So I got very interested [in ethics] from that point on.”

Due to this experience and others, Bunton decided to focus her career in journalism on the ethics side of writing and reporting.

According to a Pew Research survey, trust in news media has dropped 35% in the past five years, mostly due to social media and the amount of misinformation there.

“Every type of new technology accelerates the ability to get news to our audiences but it also accelerates our need to be good thinkers and to be ethical right there in the moment,” Bunton said.

Bunton believes that telling the truth and cutting out conflicts of interest is the key to being an ethical and thoughtful reporter. She currently teaches classes educating future journalists about how to be ethical when sharing the news.

Tony Pederson, journalism ethics professor at Southern Methodist University

Tony Pederson claims ethics is integral to journalism. Photo courtesy Tony Pederson.

“Ethics simply is how life ought to be lived,” said Tony Pederson, journalism ethics professor at Southern Methodist University, “and if you put journalism on top of that, then that means how journalism ought to be conducted, how news ought to be gathered and how dissemination of news should occur.”

Pederson credits his career at the Houston Chronicle, where he was executive editor, for making him interested in journalism ethics.

“I was always interested in the First Amendment and interested in freedom of expression, and the complete freedom of opinion, to express opinion,” Pederson said.

After becoming a professor at SMU, he continued to learn about ethics and decided to teach it. He is “absolutely committed” to discussing journalism ethics to ensure that future journalists are truthful and unbiased.

Pederson says he believes that ethics is not the only issue with journalism in the world today. He said lazy reporting – not going deep enough into a topic to be able to give all of the facts – is ruining journalists’ reputations just as much as ethical problems.

“A journalist has to have a real approach to every possible story,” Pederson said. “There's an old saying in journalism that ‘plans fail, but planning never does.’ If you really have a plan that is systematic then you don't really have to worry about lazy reporting.”

Besides lazy reporting and issues surrounding ethics, Pederson also claims that social media is a huge issue in journalism. While social media completely changed the way the world consumes its news, people are abusing it and posting completely false reports.

Pederson said that news is not about serving a community, but getting clicks and views.

“I've had so many editors, and so many reporters, telling me what social media has done. It has just degraded the reputation and the standing of journalists and quality news,” Pederson said.

Pederson said believes that due to social media, genuine and factual reporting has been buried by shocking and false news. The inaccurate news gets the spotlight on social media instead of truthful reporting.

“Good reporters and good editors who concentrate on detailed fact-finding and detailed reporting, tend to be pushed aside and that whole conversation, unfortunately, is on Twitter,” Pederson said. “It's often the person who's the loudest and the most obnoxious who has standing and not the one who's thoughtful and considerate and reporting detailed fact.”

Pederson urges all young reporters to continue to write and share stories. These reporters still need to remember to be truthful and stick to their ethics and morals.

“You have to stay committed to fact-finding, reporting and making sure that every detail is accurate,” Pederson said. “Accuracy solves so many issues. If you are absolutely accurate in every detail, then you have got a real chance to be able to produce ethical journalism.”

Jarrett Harding, copy editor of TCU's TCU’s student newspaper, The Skiff

Rising TCU junior Jarrett Harding works for TCU's student newspaper, The Skiff. Photo by Callie Ehmann.

Working as a full-time student and journalist can be difficult because conflicts of interests are common, said Jarrett Harding, head copy editor of The Skiff. Harding vows to not interview people he personally knows to avoid any conflict of interest.

“If source A does not work out, a lot of sources know other people that you can talk to,” Harding said. “If source A is a conflict of interest, you can still talk to source A about other people who they may know who could also talk about that specific topic.”

Harding remembers a specific time when he had to give up a certain source to avoid a conflict of interest.

“I did a story about [a fraternity’s] blood drive, and I knew some of the people in that fraternity so I couldn't talk specifically to them because it would be a conflict of interest,” Harding said. “I did have to go on my own to go talk to someone that I didn't know that was in that fraternity.”

Working on multiple TCU student media organizations has changed Harding’s view on ethics. He said he wanted to change the misconception that journalists are liars and purposefully try to dig up dirt on others by writing and reporting truthful stories.

“It made me try harder to make sure that whatever I was putting out was the whole truth,” Harding said. “Because at the end of the day, no one wants to look like a liar.”

Harding also wants to encourage young student journalists to be kind and truthful to audiences and all sources.

“My advice to future journalists would be to be personable,” Harding said. t the end of the day, people will tell you no, but you're more likely to get a yes if you're just nice.”

Tenae Durham, Managing Editor for Broadcasting and Audience Engagement at TCU 360

Rising TCU senior Tenae Durham works as the managing editor for TCU 360. Photo courtesy Tenae Durham.

Before becoming the managing editor for broadcast and audience engagement, Tenae Durham was involved with Unscripted, TCU’s sports talk show. Durham included professional sports as well as TCU in her broadcasts. One thing she had to make sure was perfect was the photos.

“Whenever we were using photos or film or anything like that, we have to keep track of that because NFL, NBA and ESPN, they're all very strict about who has access to their photos,” Durham said.

Plagiarism, or not citing someone’s words or work, is a huge ethical concern in journalism.

Durham and her co-anchors made sure they were ethical and spreading the truth because it was not only their reputations on the line.

“The hardest thing that we had to deal with was that we all are a part of TCU 360,” Durham said. “We are all writers for TCU 360, and being a part of Unscripted means we are under the TCU 360 umbrella.”

When faced with a conflict of interest or ethical dilemma, Durham said she tries to find a different source or angle.

“We're not gonna run it, cause think about it in the grand scheme of things. If it's going to compromise the ethics, it's not just your show at hand, it's the entire TCU 360 umbrella, and then we're not credible,” Durham said.

Durham encourages young writers to keep pushing their sources and to never give up when writing a story and researching.

“Send another email, give another phone call, especially if you're interviewing people who work within our field, they want to talk to us and they do want to help us,” Durham said. “If they don't get back to you right away it is not necessarily because they didn't want to talk to you, but they are doing what we are doing, chasing their own stories.”

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