Nothing But The Truth
Journalism is the action of sharing news in various forms to inform to the outside world. According to Kovach and Rosenstiel, the purpose of journalism is to notify the viewers of the altering events that continuously occur. Also, it is known that the news has to portray the truth, but how far would a news anchor go to get that truth, and are their ways of doing so ethically? In the show “Newsroom”, we have Will McAvoy, a renown news anchor interviewing a black republican named Sutton Wall, and this man is known to be working for a senator named Rick Santorum who once publicly claimed that gay people are a threat to “the traditional values of this country”. In the scene, Will tried to bully the answers out of Wall, not caring on whether he is harming him or not. The aggression continued as Will started to ask questions that we all know the answer to, it was just a way to provoke Wall to actually admit the truth about him not being seen an equal by his superior. As much as Wall tried to defend Santorum by claiming that he has showed him nothing but respect over the last decade, however he also stated that Santorum is wrong in his position on gay rights. Will’s method would be considered to be an unethical way of doing his job, but nonetheless he accomplished in getting the truth out of Wall.
From a theoretical perspective, Will McAvoy’s approach to getting the truth is nothing less than a “Utilitarian method” which means achieving the truth without putting into consideration the consequences. Will does that by attacking Wall throughout the interview with a series of question that directly threatens the career of Wall. Like every theory, utilitarianism has its advantages and drawbacks. McAvoy uses the utilitarian approach to his advantage by forcing out the truth out of Wall with aggressive questioning, as a result it ended up pushing Wall to admit that his boss doesn’t actually see him fit to be a college professor. On the other hand, utilitarianism has been known to be a biased approach, since it promotes favoritism. Yet, from the viewers stand point, this provides so called “entertainment”. In one of the scenes, even the producer did not approve of McAvoy’s method of questioning, which shows that the utilitarian approach could not always be applied in a newsroom setting.
Another ethical approach that can be applied to this scene is consequentialism. It is the idea that if the result of the action is not judged as right, then that action is deemed unethical. In McAvoy’s case, his actions were clearly unethical since as stated before, his way of asking questions were not to simply know the truth, but to make Wall so uncomfortable that he was forced to say things he wouldn’t have in another situation. Opposite to consequentialism is non-consequentialism which implies that an action must be truthful justified and fair. That theory does not apply to the given scene since the interviewer did not give Wall justice and was not fair by assuming facts on the relationship of Wall and his superior.
To conclude, Will’s method is commonly used in media settings, however they are not always agreed upon, since they have been proven to be aggressive, unfair, and unethical. However the question remains, how far are news anchors willing to go to flush out the truth out of the people they are interviewing.
References:
Christopher, A. (2013, February 15). Ethical Theories In Journalism. Retrieved from https://achris10.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/ethical-theories-in-journalism/
What is the purpose of journalism? (2013, October 09). Retrieved from https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/what-is-journalism/purpose-journalism/
Lombardo, R. (2016, July 12). Utilitarianism Advantages and Disadvantages. Retrieved from https://connectusfund.org/utilitarianism-advantages-and-disadvantages
