Assignment 1-4: Moral and Ethical Issues of Wartime Journalism

As with any profession, there are many moral and ethical issues associated with journalism and journalists. In fact, journalists might face the most scrutiny when faced with these issues because journalists are the people that decide what citizens see and read about and also what citizens do not see and read about.

While I was looking for different websites that could give me some information on the ethics of journalism I came across the website for the Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/). In this website there is a section of articles that discusses journalism ethics and as I was reading over the topics, the one that stuck out in my mind was titled “Resolving Ethical Conflicts in Wartime.” If you think about it, war brings about even more issues involving journalists because the stakes are even higher. If a journalist was to obtain some secret information that deals with military strategies or deployment strategies should he/she publish the information? My quick answer would be, No, he/she should not publish the information because it is fairly obvious that publishing this information could put soldiers in danger. There is also really no need for citizens to know about different military strategies for a war that is presently taking place.

This webpage talking about wartime journalism ethics can be found at: http://www.spj.org/ethicswartime.asp. I think this webpage is a great source because it contains a series of topics and questions a journalist should ask him/her before making any type of decision. For example, an important question that I found on the website was,
“How critical is the information in helping the public understand crucial issues, make informed decisions, influence policy or evaluate the performance of government?” There are many different types of wartime information that is good for the public to hear about. One of the great things about journalists is they keep the government in check. Without journalists a large part of the checks and balances not contained in the constitution would be lost and would allow the government more control to do what whatever it wanted.

There are even more moral and ethical considerations in a wartime environment than any other journalistic setting. Huge numbers of journalists are sent from all over the world, some put themselves in harms way in the hopes of getting a major story. But, journalists need to remember that no matter how much a story means to him/her there could always be a person or persons that the story could affect in a more important or even deadlier way.