With many calling the death of the traditional newspaper imminent, journalists and editors are forced to make risky decisions to stay afloat in a changing news marketplace and media environment. Competing with blogs and social media that can generate more content at much lower margins, owners are pressuring their newspapers to cut costs and produce content by any means necessary . In his article “Ethical Values and Quality Control in the Digital Era”, Bob Steele argues that the journalistic ethics that have often been left behind in favor of shaving costs are, in fact, traditional news media’s saving grace, and should be preserved in spite of newer, faster competition. With this in mind, Steele’s main claim is that newspapers must stay true
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First, he introduces a case study in which a blog post of questionable veracity was reported on in a legitimate newspaper. This, Steele argues, both undermines the integrity of the newspaper itself and contributes to the public’s lack of trust in newspapers: by republishing and commentating on the blog post, the newspaper gives it undeserved credibility. Steele also provides an example of a user-submitted, story on CNN’s iReport website that claimed Steve Jobs had suffered a massive heart attack (Steele 3). Although the story was completely false, CNN implicitly endorsed the content through its inclusion on their website, regardless of the story’s source. This evidence of lower-quality newspaper content, in print and online, supports Steele’s premise that readers have lost trust in newspapers, and in turn, his main premise that newspapers should hold themselves to higher ethical standards, but this logical connection is dependent on the reader’s acceptance of his implied premise that reprinting questionable content in a respected source lends that source’s credibility to the content undeservedly. In conjunction with his examples of ethical corner-cutting, though, Steele provides evidence characterizing the journalists and editors …show more content…
He provides numerous examples to this effect, such as comments on an article about a blog post on hate crimes that “clearly pushed beyond the paper’s standards against offensive name-calling and racist and bigoted commentary” (Steele 2)—in this case, the participatory element of the comment section provided a window for unapproved, and, in this case, unethical (by both Steele’s and the paper’s standards) content. Also mentioned are the real-world effects of the inaccurate CNN story on Steve Jobs’ heart attack: despite the fact that the story was eventually corrected and removed, Apple’s stock plummeted in the meantime (Steele 3). These pieces of evidence support the idea that the actions of newspapers can and do have a real-world impact, which is critical to the exigence of his argument. Although this premise is implied in Steele’s argument and never explicitly stated, it is clear that these examples of shoddy ethics in the newspaper industry are meant to convince the reader that a higher standard should be
First, he introduces a case study in which a blog post of questionable veracity was reported on in a legitimate newspaper. This, Steele argues, both undermines the integrity of the newspaper itself and contributes to the public’s lack of trust in newspapers: by republishing and commentating on the blog post, the newspaper gives it undeserved credibility. Steele also provides an example of a user-submitted, story on CNN’s iReport website that claimed Steve Jobs had suffered a massive heart attack (Steele 3). Although the story was completely false, CNN implicitly endorsed the content through its inclusion on their website, regardless of the story’s source. This evidence of lower-quality newspaper content, in print and online, supports Steele’s premise that readers have lost trust in newspapers, and in turn, his main premise that newspapers should hold themselves to higher ethical standards, but this logical connection is dependent on the reader’s acceptance of his implied premise that reprinting questionable content in a respected source lends that source’s credibility to the content undeservedly. In conjunction with his examples of ethical corner-cutting, though, Steele provides evidence characterizing the journalists and editors …show more content…
He provides numerous examples to this effect, such as comments on an article about a blog post on hate crimes that “clearly pushed beyond the paper’s standards against offensive name-calling and racist and bigoted commentary” (Steele 2)—in this case, the participatory element of the comment section provided a window for unapproved, and, in this case, unethical (by both Steele’s and the paper’s standards) content. Also mentioned are the real-world effects of the inaccurate CNN story on Steve Jobs’ heart attack: despite the fact that the story was eventually corrected and removed, Apple’s stock plummeted in the meantime (Steele 3). These pieces of evidence support the idea that the actions of newspapers can and do have a real-world impact, which is critical to the exigence of his argument. Although this premise is implied in Steele’s argument and never explicitly stated, it is clear that these examples of shoddy ethics in the newspaper industry are meant to convince the reader that a higher standard should be