Ethical Issues In Journalism

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of how people should rethink journalists’ ethical responsibilities to their readers and to one another by rhetorically analyzing two articles. The article, “Is All of Twitter Fair Game for Journalists?” by Amanda Hess, focuses on the author’s point of view in whether journalists should be allowed to consent to use information from people’s Twitter profiles. “Digital Media Ethics,” by Stephen J. A Ward is mainly focused on the ethics journalists are expected to have. Journalists should be aware of the information they are gathering and producing to protect ones’ privacy. This paper will focus on analyzing and synthesizing two different articles.
Summary of each text In “Is All of Twitter …show more content…
Ward focuses on whether new media ethics should be created due to the changing of journalism. He is also focused on the different kinds of journalism that exist in this new era. Ward also explains the layers that newsrooms should include to provide new standards to guide journalists into writing their articles. However, the author claims that having layers in a newsroom can bring up questions and create problems for both online and offline journalists. Ward mentions the three different kinds of responses to the questions of what is journalism and who is doing journalism. The three different kinds of approaches are skeptical, empirical, and normative. The author also talks about how speed can create rumors among people due to trying to quickly spread news to the readers. Lastly, Ward talks about the manipulation of photos and if it is ethical to alter photos to make them seem real and …show more content…
The article written by Hess has more opinions from different people and the use of a real example, but the article written by Ward is more factual and describes the different kinds of journalism. Ward’s article has more explanations about journalism and the steps behind creating it. The layout of both articles targets different kinds of audience. Hess’s article targets the people who read journalism and who have different opinions on the pieces they read. For example, Hess mentions that journalists are accountable to their readers (Para. 12). This means that journalists will get information from any source just to give their readers something to read and formulate their opinions. On the other hand, Ward’s article is intended for the writers whose focus is journalism. Ward begins his article by mentioning the different kinds of journalism including blogging and social media and the practices/norms that create ethical problems (Para. 1). Beginning his article in that way allows the readers to know that the article is intended for those who write