Ethics called into question

Ethics in the media was the topic of choice this week following the announcement Saturday that New York Times reporter Jayson Blair resigned following a career marked by "frequent acts of journalistic fraud."

Unfortunately this is not an isolated circumstance and reporters are often caught up in lies one way or another, whether it be fabricating interviews with sources or pulling information from pre-existing articles, as Blair has done. Or reporting based on the agenda of the Bush administration or under the influence of corporate media owners. A dearth of ethics in the media seems to be all too frequent an occurrence.

Still this rather huge upset in the journalism community-let alone that it comes from the newspaper with arguably the highest ethical standards ­ comes as a reminder for journalists to strive to maintain integrity in their work and encourage the public to force journalists to stay ethical.

If the media is in fact like a fourth branch of the U.S. government, as journalists have been dubbed through history, then the fourth branch of government needs to maintain it's duties first and foremost to the public.

Journalists have a truth-telling responsibility. It is the journalist's job to report the facts and, in doing so, they will keep or in some cases rebuild the trust of the people that they are supposed to be writing for. If it is the journalist's job to uphold the First Amendment that this country holds so dear, then the people must be able to trust that what they are reading is fact and that they, in turn, can formulate their own judgements based on these facts.

It should not be the public's responsibility to have to consider that the material presented to them has been fabricated or embellished to forward a journalist's or worse, a corporation's agenda.

When Blair wrote an apology letter to the Times and the Associated Press after his resignation, he stated that his actions showed a "lapse of journalistic integrity."

There cannot be such a lapse in integrity. Journalists at the University of La Verne learn in Journalism 100 that, along with covering the who, what, when, where, why and how, there is a strict code of ethics that needs to be followed from the time reporters interview through the publication of the stories. Such ethical standards, which vary somewhat among publications, must be adhered to for journalism to remain a viable source of information for the public.

Perhaps some writers and editors should keep a code of ethics checklist in their pockets if tempted to follow a destructive path like Blair's.

In fact, at journalism.org, the Project for Excellence in Journalism has created such a checklist. Its questions include "What is my journalistic purpose?" "What are my ethical concerns?" "What are the possible consequences of my actions?"

Sounds simple enough to follow, but time and again we see that some reporters find the list difficult, or impossible to follow.

Journalists must realize the power that the media holds in influencing public opinion and they must use that power responsibly.

As today's technology makes it increasingly easier for journalists to work more independently in the field, they must be careful not to misuse their tools. Just last month a Los Angeles Times photographer was fired for submitting a photograph that was a composite of two other photographs.

One of the reasons New York Times editors have suggested that Blair was able to get away with writing articles that required him to travel to various locations while he remained local to New York, was because of access to cell phones and laptops. He could also access databases containing news stories and photographs that helped him take information and images from people and places he had never visited.

Even though the Times overlooked details in Blair's career that would have pointed to his obvious misconduct, it should be pointed out that the individual journalists must be responsible and ethical.