Media and Privacy - Assignment Example

It is not ethical to invade people’s privacy and it should always be paramount to protect their image (Karen 21). When dealing with cases where the person is in the public place, they expect to have their privacy protected from the public. However, they have to respect privacy but at the same time be robust about their investigation. Journalist should not disclose publicly any private, irrelevant and embarrassing facts about people. Misappropriating a person’s name and image for personal gain is also unethical.

Intruding into a person’s solitude and exposing them to the public is against journalistic principles (Stephen 34). However, if an individual is considered to have been involved in any crime, they could have their rights to privacy waived as it mostly seen to be in the public’s interest to depict their behavior. The audience responds differently when it comes to nudity, coarse language, and violence. This should only be published when it is only necessary for the public to be made aware. When shocking materials are considered important in a story, they usually arouse negative public reaction.

The public should be warned of disturbing and explicit materials that they may be exposed to (Stephen 15). They should never be caught off guard and censor forms should be used so as to prevent children from watching such features which may leave them disturbed. Images of graphic scenes that show violence, shocking, bloody and tragic features are at times seen in the news. Reporters are accused of being indecent in the way they collect the news and showcase it to the public (Karen 43). However, as much as the journalists observe the code f ethics, there are some concerns that the content of journalism is being ignored.

Modern reporting is seen as biased, especially on issues of politics. Sensationalism is also a major complaint as many people relate to this. The concerns are bigger as the media continues to change by the day to suite diversity. Selective reporting is seen to be practiced by many media houses and newspapers. These goes against the codes of ethics (Stephen 54). Question 2 Journalists are guided by a code of ethics and some of the elements included in the code include the principle that the materials they submit should be accurate, fair, truthful, and have an objective.

Any material released to the public should be clearly scrutinized before its release and all the details written should be accurate and should have more things to support it. Fairness should be exercised and all journalists should be able to get both sides of the story (Stephen 58). They should get accurate information from their sources so as to steer clear of inadvertent error. The public has the right to know of the sources’ reliability and the sources should be questioned so as to clarify that there are no motives behind their information.

Journalists should give the accused persons the opportunity to respond to the accusations of wrongdoing (Karen 67). Distorting information that they have been given is against the rules of conducts. They should not mislead the public with the information that they publish. Gathering information via surreptitious methods should always be avoided. They should tell stories of diversity and magnitude regardless of its popularity. They should not stereotype by religion, race, age, sexual preference, disability, social status, and physical appearances.