Media Ethics symposium

At the third annual Spuler Media Ethics Symposium, four public relations speciliast stressed the importance of upholding your moral compass. Although I am a journalism major, I was able to apply much of what they said to my job.

Jonathan Hirshon brought up real examples of withholding information in a press release. He said, for example, if you know that one and a million people have a chance at getting cancer from a drug, and you withhold that information, then you aren't being ethical. I immediately thought about my journalism stories and how they need to be balanced. Presenting an unbalanced story is unethical in its own way, because readers may believe one side is true when in reality there is a huge opposing viewpoint that readers don't get.

The speakers also talked about the stakes being higher in today's market. "Google never forgets" was a line from one of the speakers. It was reference to the fact that if you do something unethical, it will never escape, whereas a few decades ago, that wasn't necessarily the case.

Ultimately, Hirshon said the moment you are considering if the ends just the means, you should stop yourself, because the day when you wake up and you can't look at yourself in the mirror is the day you've lost your ethical nature.