Week 8: News Ethics

Taken by Kevin Carter, 1993.

This week we talked extensively in our tutorials about the image above. This photo was taken by Kevin Carter in 1993 and he won the Pulitzer prize for it in 1994. There was much backlash and uproar after the photo was published and this unfortunately played a contributing role in Kevin Carter's subsequent suicide. 

Whilst there was much controversy surrounding the photo and Kevin Carter's ethics in the taking of the photo, I think it is very unfortunate that this happened. Many many people would have reacted without knowing the full story. Even when I was talking about this photo with a few friends at dinner (by total coincidence) prior to starting JOUR1111, my friends expressed their disgust at him not having helped the child... They were clearly unaware that he was under strict instructions to leave the child alone. Thus, it is obvious how easily people can be misinformed and how dangerous misleading information can be... 

Ethics is obvious a very important yet vague aspect of Journalism. I think that ethics are often very subjective. We looked at advertising primarily in the lecture because, as the lecturer stated, the regulations and principles of advertising are applicable to journalism and PR. Many of the images that we looked at in the lecture were quite tacky or 'in bad taste', but I didn't think many were unethical. However, even though it could be argued that they were 'in bad taste' I thought that the tackiness may have actually added to the effectiveness of the advertisement. For example, the image below which is a quit smoking campaign:

I think the 'naughty' aspect of the billboard would actually help people to remember the message and therefore do it's job more effectively. 

We then moved onto Australia's "Where the bloody hell are you?" tourism campaign. While I don't think it was unethical, I agree that it was perhaps in poor taste. However, whilst researching for a tourism subject I am taking at the moment, I found that despite it being in poor enough taste to be banned from British television, it was still watched by over 100,000 people in the UK online before it was released on television. So, bad taste or not, it was still rather successful and this is, perhaps, attributed to the controversial nature of the ad. 

In conclusion, I believe that risque things are sometimes a good way to grab the readers' attention but I also think that if journalists find themselves aiming for the 'shock factor' then perhaps they need to review their content to see if it is worthy of the attention they seek without the sensationalism. If it isn't, then they need to find better stories.