Ethical dilemma: Truth Vs. Harm
“The Duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way.” (Wang, 2004).
Journalism is supposed to be the mediator between the state and people that transfers only objective news. This transmission can be verbal and written. The most common sources nowadays to get the news are television and social media. Media can be sensitive sometimes. The freedom of speech is required when it comes to posting ideas throughout media. Ethics also take a huge part in the media world. Without ethical boundaries, things might deviate to a dark side. Media has responsibilities towards the audience, such as clarity on the aims and function of media in society. “Media are one of the most important “truth-seeking” institutions”. (Zejnullahi, 2016, p.152). “Without practices aimed at truth cooperative human activity breaks down”. (Couldry, 2013, p. 16).
Sometimes, it can be harmful towards the society, and for the own speaker. In fact, no truth comes without any harm. For sure, the interview between Will McAvoy and Nick Santorum’s assistant has definitely caused harm for both of them.
McAvoy and the news group guaranteed their gathering of people to restore truth, uprightness and trustworthiness in their news. But during the interview, McAvoy took the questions to the next level. He asked Sutton wall about his sexuality and race, trying to create a conflict between him and Nick Santorum. This interview held a lot of responsibilities for actually striving to find the real truth regarding Wall’s answers.
Striving to only give people the truth, McAvoy’s aggressive way of interviewing Sutton Wall wasn’t exactly justified. Also, it is noticeable that the interview became tense, which made the audience feel a little bit annoyed. Even the news crew were shocked, where the producer said “Stop hitting him”. That shows that Will McAvoy may have exceeded the limits. There is a fine line between being rude and straightforward. McAvoy crossed that line. In fact, he should’ve stopped at the beginning of the interview, where Wall was still responding in a polite and respectful way.
Ethics in media require telling the truth no matter what. In this situation, Will’s behavior was leaning into the non — consequentialist theory, the deontology theory, which consists on the need to stick to the promise of receiving the full truth, even if it caused harm to the other person. He was ready to cause harm on real television in front of everyone just to not break his promise towards his career and the audience. In the other hand, a consequentialist (utilitarianism theory) would believe that Will was also trying to achieve maximum happiness to the maximum amount of people, even if that involves actions that are in themselves unethical (ward, 2011, p. 38). To reach his goal, he crossed and jumped over many moral principles, in order to keep the audience interested, by getting involved in topics concerning the other’s race and sexuality. In fact, he kept pushing him until the interview was full with toxicity and tension. Sutton lost it eventually, trying to use the same tone and style as Will’s. Therefore, the best theory that should’ve been applied is the virtue theory; which is finding the right balance between extremes, also known as the “Golden mean”. The golden mean is the right balance between both extremes (ward, 2011, p.44). So, Will was stuck in the two extremes: Truth and Harm.
The last question that Will asked at the end of the interview caused more damage. He should’ve shifted this debate into another path, a more respectful one. Along these lines he would have limited the measure of damage he caused yet at the same time got a decent measure of truth for his audience.
Journalists are well known to have a strong personality, especially if they are engaged and specialized in politics. Politics is never stable, and political news are important in order to give people the right information and the true image of politicians. In this interview, Will seemed to be very motivated while asking the questions, with a high level of adrenaline. But that doesn’t explain the need to take the interview too far which caused embarrassment and humiliation to the interviewee. It is also noticeable that Will was attacking the person on purpose, and while trying to show his full objectivity, but also it seemed like he was causing him and Nick Santorum hurt. He should’ve focused more on Santorum’s political point of view and achievements instead of using one tweet to point out his personal opinion in front of everyone. Freedom of speech is very important when it comes to posting thoughts on social media. People have different opinions. In this situation, Will made Santorum look like the “bad guy” when he talked about racism and homophobia. In fact, isn’t he allowed to express his real thoughts? Even if he was a presidential candidate, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deserve to act like a normal human being.
Will McAvoy shouldn’t have expressed that much anger during the interview. Although he was being totally objective, but he took it to the extreme. It is understandable that seeking for the truth has its price, but that doesn’t give the right to humiliate and offend a person in front of a whole nation. The excitement of grabbing the truth out of the interviewee after seeing him being neutral in his answers wasn’t much helpful. Instead, he should’ve found a way to extract the answers he wanted with a different tone and style.
References:
1- Couldry, N. (2013). Why Media Ethics Still Matters. In S. J. Ward, Global Media Ethics, Malden, MA; Oxford and Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell., pp. 13–27
2- Wang, J. (2004). Lecture: Noam Chomsky. Retrieved from: https://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/bullpen/noam_chomsky/lecture/
3- Ward, S. (2011). ‘What is Ethics’ in Ethics and the Media, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 38
4- Ward, S. (2011). ‘What is Ethics’ in Ethics and the Media, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 44
5- Zejnullahi, V. (2016). The Process of Globalization and Its Impact on Media. European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies. 1(4). 152.
