Task 3. Discussing the ethics of journalism.

1. Rewrite each point of the journalistic code in a simple and short form. (Begin your sentence with "Jour­nalists must/should...")

2. Which point do you consider the most important? Why?

3. Discuss examples from the media where you think journalists have not followed this code.

 

Task 4. Find English equivalents of the following in the text:

· Отстаивать правду;

· свобода узнавать и сообщать факты;

· влечь за собой обязательства;

· освещать события грамотно, объективно, точно и правдиво;

· первостепенная задача;

· распространять новости и информированное мнение;

· служить на благо общества;

· неотъемлемое право;

· обсуждать и подвергать сомнению правильность действий и высказываний членов нашего правительства;

· выступать за право высказывать непопулярные мнения;

· уважать честь, личные свободы, права и благополучие других людей.

 

Task 5. This story is an example of the violation of the principles of the journalistic code. Read it and turn to the tasks after the text.

The Public's Right to Know?

Gene Roberts, executive editor of the Philadel­phia Inquirer, was covering a murder once when he learned that police had shot the suspect and were interrogating him in a hospital emergency room that was off-limits to reporters.

Roberts scouted around and found a stethos­cope near a soft drink machine. He put it around his neck, strolled into the emergency room, listened to the suspect's confession, and wrote his story.

"I never said I was a doctor, but the stethos­cope would certainly have given that impres­sion," Roberts concedes.

Would he have put on a doctor's white coat, too, if it had been available?

"It's quite possible."

But the confession of a murder suspect is hardly a story of transcendent social value. Doesn't that misrepresentation bother him now?

"No. If in all circumstances, you're going to require reporters to just walk up to people and state their name, rank, and serial number and say, “Tell me the truth,” you're flat not going to get the truth. The public will be ill-served."

Some reporters have made a virtual career out of masquerading as others in the pursuit of stories.

Mike Goodman of the Los Angeles Tunes, for example, has posed as an animal keeper in a zoo, an employee in a juvenile detention facility, an oil pipeline worker in Alaska, a hippie in Holly­wood, and, like Roberts, he once carried a stethoscope into a hospital emergency room to get a story.

"I'm a great believer in the reporter as ob­server," Goodman says, "firsthand observation is the ultimate documentation."

From ‘Press Watch - A Provocative Look at How Newspapers Report the News’ by David Shaw. New York: Macmillan, 1984, p. 146.

 

Task 6. Answer the questions:

1. What did Gene Roberts once do in order to get a story?

2. How does he try to justify his methods of collecting information?

3. What stories might journalists like Mike Goodman have been covering when posing as an animal keeper or an oil pipeline worker, etc.?

 

Task 7. Discuss the following questions with your group:

1. Reread the journalistic code of ethics. Which principles are in conflict here?

2. How do you personally feel about this "masquerading technique" of gathering news?

 

? WRITING

Task 8. Write a "Letter to the Editor" on this topic (see Appendix 1).