STEPHANIE 
HALOVANIC 

Below is a personal essay writen for my capstone course about ethics in jouranlism. 

 

Truth: the staple of ethics 

 

Journalism and journalists prioritize the production of ethically correct content, far more than I attuned prior to studying the trade. I transferred from Loyola University Chicago my freshman year to attend the Missouri School of Journalism because it was the best. Naively, I had never practiced journalism in my life when 18-year-old me moved to mid-Missouri to follow what I hoped was my passion. What I found, thankfully, was that the core of journalism values, the core of the values taught at the Missouri School of Journalism, are the ethics of journalism.

 

I took my first journalism course that first summer in Columbia. I took Principles of American Journalism where I read The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. These pages were my first taste of journalism beyond reading newspaper and magazine articles and the ever-present jabber of journalism’s liberal bias throughout my conservative Texas youth.

 

I remember something clicking when reading the second chapter of this book, “Truth: The First and Most Confusing Principle.” It seemed commonsensical that journalists shouldn’t lie, that “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” But as I read on, I started to grasp the complexities in not only telling the truth, but also sifting through it. The truth is a tricky being, though. As a journalist, is not telling the full story considered cheating the truth? This is a dilemma I encountered early on when writing my first long-form story while working on the features beat at the Columbia Missourian.

 

I was covering the journey of a former drug dealer who started an iPhone repair business while on a court ordered sobriety. This was my first intricate reporting experience. We agreed that I would meet him at his apartment downtown, which at the time doubled as his office space. I spent about three hours chatting with him about life as a drug dealer, the Columbia drug scene and how watching hundreds of iPhone repair tutorial videos on YouTube pulled him out of a dark place and a spiraling mess.

 

I would consider myself a fairly friendly person, and in that three hours our conversation started to feel more like two friends getting to know each other, rather than an interview where I was liable to report on anything he told me. He started telling me which Columbia police officers he used to sell cocaine to, and shared intimate details of the national drug bust that led to his initial arrest. He obviously felt very comfortable with me, and my growing curiosity did not in any way slow the flow of conversation.

 

Here and there he would casually throw in the line, “and off the record...” leaving me completely and utterly confused about what material I was to report. When reviewing my first draft of the story with my editor, I started telling her some of the other interesting, “off the record” anecdotes he had shared with me. My editor responded with an enthusiastic, “write that in there!” I was immediately overflowing with anxiety, utterly confused where to draw the line between exploiting my “friend” and reporting these colorful facts. Wide-eyed and terrified, I had no idea what to do.

 

Thinking about that situation in relation to the guidelines of Walter William’s “The Journalist’s Creed,” the line still seems fuzzy. Considering the first line, “I believe in the profession of Journalism, ” I feel a sense of duty to the people of Columbia to report their corrupt law enforcement. But then I read the line, “I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true,” and I think of this amazing transformation story, and how the inclusion of some of these details could potentially demolish a new business, and even worse, taint the path of this man’s personal renaissance. This theme of indecisiveness continues as I analyze the creed, and to this day, I still think I would make the same decision.

 

In the end, I stuck with my gut. I directed the focus of the story on the development of a new business, and left the works for a scandalous drug-busting feature in the dust.

 

In my career thus far as a journalist, delivering the truth and ensuring accuracy have been paramount in both what I report and how I report it. The truth is a delicate thing, and as we introduce each new facet of reporting the news, there are a matching number of new ethical obstacles

 

The truth is a tree with many roots and twice as many branches. The roots solidify telling the truth as the primary mission of all journalism. This includes things as miniscule—though equally important—as correctly spelling a source’s name, accurately reporting quotes and making sure you have precisely stated every possible fact about an event.

 

The roots also embody journalism’s responsibility to investigate and not to accept unanswered questions. Being a defender and voice of the truth requires developing an acute sense of curiosity. Journalists do not just interview people; they interview and assess entire situations, decisions and ideas. They interrogate every aspect of their story. This is the only way to ensure accuracy, to ensure truth.

 

The branches of this metaphorical tree of truth have grown exponentially with the development of digital media. The element of news timeliness moves at a rate we couldn’t have predicted even just ten years ago. Twitter, specifically, has forever changed our understanding of immediacy. However, this pays a price.

 

The best-known ethical and accuracy failure caused by the temptations of Twitter’s accessibility and rapidity is the breaking news coverage of the Boston Marathon Bombing. According to SmartNews, researchers reported that only 20 percent of the 8 million tweets sent out following the bombing were accurate. When I first heard these statistics, I immediately thought, “That could never happen at the Missourian.”

 

I remember working Election Day on my breaking news shift at the Columbia Missourian my junior year. I had taken down nearly a dozen one liner quotes from voters outside a polling station. I had to call each and every one of those sources and read back the 15 or so words they had said to me. This sort of accuracy checking is something that has been instilled in me as an absolutely mandatory step in the reporting process. I can recall a time when I called a source for a fact check, and she told me that she had gained a new respect for journalists because I was making sure that she was aware of what I was reporting.

 

I have unfortunately found that too many people have this sour taste in their mouth when they hear the word journalist. Every journalist knows that look you get every so often when announcing your profession, that change in facial expression that suggests immediate distrust, as if your sole mission is to go out there and shake things up.

 

In a way, though, our mission is to shake things up. Our job is to be curious and to tell the untold stories. We can create public dialogue with just a thousand words. And this dialogue has power. It can lead to actual societal reforms that make concrete changes.

 

Some say the media is the fourth branch of our government, and in many ways, it is. When holding journalism at this platform of power, we can clearly see the importance of journalism’s commitment to truth and accuracy. “The Journalist’s Creed” states, “I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.” It is a fact that journalism is changing, but traditional journalism’s ethical values will never change. So to the guillotine with the rumors that journalism is dying. Journalism will only die the day ethical values become obsolete.