When to draw the line

Journalist are public servants. Their intentions are in essence pure and that should be reflected in the honest journalism that they do. However, sometimes certain news agencies do not have the luxury of being too honest and selective, and in this case it seems to be the opposite.

“Treat sources, objects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving respect.” Will McAvoy’s absolutism with regards to the ultimate truth prevented him from practicing his ethical duties towards Nick Santorum’s representative. He was fully engaged in an almost dictator like attitude to getting whatever information he could in the most dehumanising and humiliating way for the sake of justice and truth. The problem with this is that the ends should not overshadow the means, even if this means “justice” will be served. McAvory, overstepped his boundaries for the sake of the agenda that he has set.

Journalist should be the scale of information; they should know what information should be used and whether the information causes harm to the audience or their guest speakers and everyone else involved.

McAvory, in his monologue promised to give the viewers full transparency and objectification when it comes to news reporting for at least one hour a day. This non sponsored hour, would be a non biased moment of full non consequential news reporting. The problem with this, is that news reporting isn’t as flat as that. These are real people, who are in real situations who live real lives outside the frame of the camera and newsroom. Simply putting them in the context of news and media is degrading and is an act of simplifying these people into objects of interest rather than human beings.

Nick Santorum’s representative was simply doing his job to fully represent his boss in the best image of him. He started with a loyal attitude and trying to side with him, he did admit that he did have his individual views and that he disagreed with some key points that Santorum believed it. This shows that he is trying to be professional and wasn’t expecting McAvory to ask such questions in order to place him into a corner.

His homophobia and race related remarks should not have targeted a specific individual for the sake of the channels gain in terms of keeping its promise towards its audience . McAvory could have been less hostile and more cooperative in terms of getting the information as cleanly as possible without being abusive and as aggressive as he was. But then again if he wasn’t as direct and as forward he might have not gotten the information that he was seeking. He tried to be very blunt in his accusations and tried to almost force the answers out of the representative. It almost felt as a type of abuse, in order for him to humiliate his guest into giving him the information that he was seeking in the first place.

A utilitarian would most likely consider the consequences of his actions and weight things in terms of happiness. Meaning if his actions produces the most amount of happiness for the general public then what he is doing is generally ethical. And in this situation McAvory might have offened certain gay minorities and placing them in an uncomfortable position, especially that his guest was not expecting to disccuss these issues but rather problems with abortion and how his superior is against it. But rather he was forced into a defensive position with regards to his position as a representative and how the journalist implies that he is his boss’s puppet and does whatever he wants him to do, but in reality he is his own person and has his opinion that might not be the same as that as the politician that he is representing.

In general he should not have attacked his guest the way he did, it seemed as if he was getting too personal and was getting in his way of new reporting. He should have maintained his professionalism as a journalist and still gotten the information in a non abusive way. The trick isn’t just getting information but the process in extracting it without exploiting the other person and making him/her feel as if they were less important than they are.