Journalism and Ethics

As times change journalism becomes more and more competitive. Deadlines become tighter, the stories become bigger, and publications struggle to be the best. These factors put individual journalists under a great deal of stress. As a result, many journalists fabricate or plagiarize their stories in hope of not necessarily winning a Pulitzer, but in hope of meeting their deadlines and the demands of their readers.

It is unfortunate that these unethical, and often illegal, practices are so common in the media industry. Names like Janet Cooke and Stephen Glass are familiar names to all journalists as well as to their editors. The good news however, is that while there are so many reasons to copy the work of another, or even make stories up, there are just as many ways to prevent these actions from taking place in journalism.

One thing that can help prevent plagiarism is for individual publications or other media outlets to establish their own codes of ethics. These codes need to be specific in describing the expectations of employees. The codes also need to define the penalties for such behavior. Whether it be probation, suspension, or even termination from the organization entirely, employees need to know the consequences for breaking these codes. The employers also need to establish stricter policies on dealing with such actions. In these days a "zero-tolerance" policy would not be too outrageous.

Another thing that individual media companies can do to prevent plagiarism is to do a lot of fact checking. While journalists are responsible for their own pieces, it is hard to trust that those pieces will always be correct. Internet search engines are better than ever and are used by many publications to check for plagiarism. Other resources are also available for fact checking, including phone books, other newspapers and magazines, and trade journals to name a few.

While fact checking is important, sometimes "google" may miss something. For this reason, there is one more thing that can help prevent plagiarism in the media and that is to require journalism students to take courses in media ethics. By universities and even media outlets requiring budding journalists to take these classes, they will learn what is appropriate and what is not in terms of professional conduct for their individual career paths. As students learn about ethics,