The Pursuit of Truth vs. The Practice of Care in Journalism
Journalism is considered as an enterprise to present to the audience and to the public the truth, and journalists are supposed to maintain the interests and the needs of this public above all private or political interests and to deliver the news in a clear and objective way. According to Couldry (2013, p. 208) “media must be open to participation, open to criticism or challenge, worthy of trust as practices of truth-telling and practised with care”. The editorial policy adopted by McAvoy and his team reflects an adherence to these principles since McAvoy stated that they will be the champion of facts and truth and that he will not hide his opinions, but will give a chance to the others to present their opinions which are different than his own. However, during the interview that McAvoy had with the Sutton Wall, the assistant of a US republican senator, Rick Santorum, regarding the senator’s position on gay marriage, McAvoy proved that a too strong desire to uphold the ethical values of journalism and to protect the interest of the public can in fact, lead to unethical actions with many negative consequences.
McAvoy’s main duty as a journalist is to present to the public an objective and real discussion, such as the case with the rights of gay people to marry. He and his team vowed to restore the public’s trust in media by focusing on the balanced discussion of facts that influence the wellbeing of citizens without caring about audience ratings or the interests of the media corporation. In contrast, Sutton Wall is under the obligation to not harm the public image of the senator that he chose to represent and to present a clear and great version of the senator’s views on all matters of public importance. Thus, their interests clashed when McAvoy confronted Wall about the senator’s anti-gay and anti-black comments, which put Wall in a position where he had to admit that the senator’s comments are sexist and illogical.
The choices made by Will during the interview would be considered unethical irrespective of the ethical perspective adopted. If seen through the perspective of consequentialist ethics, Will’s insistence on obtaining an answer regarding the senator’s position on gay marriage from the assistant is unethical because it had multiple negative consequences. According to Ward (2011, p. 36), consequentialist ethics are based on the idea that “acts are right or wrong by virtue of the goodness or badness of their consequences”. Will’s aggressive manner led to a high level of psychological distress for the assistant and controlled the assistants’ decision-making autonomy by assuming that the assistant, a gay black man, needed to be made aware of the senator’s rejection of rights for both gay and black people. Moreover, as clearly explained by Wall, Will’s insistence on the assumption that a bay black person could not back a homophobe and racist senator is discriminatory and unfair because it forces Wall to be defined by his race and his sexual orientation, a situation which he clearly rejects. In general, McAvoy’s choices hurt the interest of black and gay people alike because it showed to the public that these peoples’ actions are always interpreted by white and heterosexual people through the lens of race and sexual orientation. Even from the perspective of non-consequential ethics, which hold that “an act is right because it honors an obligation to fulfill a duty, even if fulfilling the duty has negative consequences, or sets back our interests” (Ward, 2011, p. 40), McAvoy’s actions were unethical because he placed truth above care. In fact, McAvoy forgot about the value of human dignity and chose to bully and harass Wall in order to make him agree with his own views.
To wrap it all up, McAvoy’s choices starting from the middle of the interview were unethical and broke the code of ethics of the journalist profession. McAvoy had a choice, he could have avoided to mention the sexual orientation or the race of the assistant and he could have listened more carefully to what Wall was saying. If McAvoy had shed the lights on the validity of Wall’s choice to support Santorum in spite of his racist and homophobe statements, the interview would have gone in an entirely different manner. In fact, McAvoy should have ended the line of questioning regarding the senator’s views on gay marriage after he knew that Wall does not agree with these views on all matters, instead of bullying him during the interview. @JSC 419
References
- Couldry, N. (2013). Why Media Ethics Still Matters. In S.J. Ward (ed.), Global Media Ethics (pp. 13–27). Oxford and Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Ward, S.J.A. (2011). Ethics and the Media — An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
