According to the case mentioned above, the journalist received an assignment about homeless people that lived in Washington Ave in Washington, when was getting closer to his deadline and he hadn't take any good picture that captured the emotions of the readers about the assignment's subject, he decided to fake a picture of a homeless in the doorsteps of a church, but the homeless was actually his friend, a student which is not a homeless nor even a poor, and sent to his editor to be published without mentioning that the picture was staged. I believe this case happens a lot among journalists. They have a short period of time to meet their deadlines and find perfection in their crafts. When the pressure comes into one's life, people tend to react in different ways. Some make wise decisions, some don't. This is when the ethics step up into the game.
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| Picture Faked (Source:http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073511943/843051/patt7e_ch8cs_fakingphotos.pdf) |
To evaluate the case mentioned above I will be using the SPJ Code of Ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists. The SPJ Code of Ethics is helpful in evaluating the ethical considerations of this case study when it mentions clearly that every journalist professional MUST tell the truth in all times, as a universal rule. As I mentioned in my last blog post, truth is truth and period. That's our mission as journalists, to tell a fact not to stage one, as happened in this case study. This code also is clear about our duty to minimize harm respecting our subjects, colleagues, audience, etc. Once again the journalist of this case study wasn't respectful to his employer, to his audience and to the homeless people that deserves respect. The journalist beside breaking the first two codes of this code of ethics, he also wasn't accountable to his employer or audience when he didn't tell the truth, instead of admitting his mistakes, he kept lying until his picture was published. The SPJ Code of Ethics was really helpful to evaluate this ethical controversy, but I still think this code it's too wide, could be more precise providing more specific details about journalists faking images or videos.
Based on the SPJ Code of Ethics it was easy to conclude that the journalist didn't proceed in an ethical manner. When we evaluate this case study from the class lectures we can supplement the journalism ethical code with some ethical theories providing some alternate points of view for understanding the ethical considerations of this case. I think this study case fits Kant's Categorical Imperative theory, the opposite of Aristotle's Golden Mean theory, this theory is not based on the author but on the action. And the action of faking a photo is not a right decision to make, staging or faking should never be applied in journalism. It's a universalism rule. Even when we decide to apply the Bok's Ethical Decision-Making theory, after the six stages, the final result is that the journalist mentioned on this study case should not have used a fake picture to meet his deadline and complete his assignment. It should be better for him to have canceled and even haven't sent any picture than staging one. The audience deserves the truth. In this case I don't think it was too hard to get to the conclusion that a picture should never be faked, in this case Kant's Categorical Imperative theory was well applied.
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