Final Blog Post- Reviewing Student Blogs

Femi Akinpetide- The Privacy Debacle

The last paragraph of this blog entry is really what caught my eye, taking both sides of the dilemma of social networking sites and their ethical responsibilities. In my blog entry about this topic, I stated social networking sites are not exactly responsible. I mean everyone knows that in this day and age, if you want to keep a secret don’t put it on the internet. Anything that even slightly goes on the internet, is never completely gone. I think that is where the issue of privacy comes along. It should be common knowledge that privacy and social networking sites don’t go hand in hand, even though Facebook has their own privacy settings, but those only work to an extent. Femi divulges into the fact that even if social networking sites should be monitored, it would be nearly impossible. That point is very true, there is no way of monitoring every little thing said on social networking sites. Cyber bullying is, unfortunately, too much and too fast of a phenomenon to even be stopped. In my blog about the subject I talked about cyber bullying and the best way to attempt to end it is starting with the parents. Teaching children the good old fashioned way, of what is right and what is wrong. Bullying has been around for so long, people often forget that. Social networking is just another platform to which bullies use to well, bully. It all starts from parenting and what goes on at home. Let’s start there.

Lauren Forgione- Ethical Decision Making

I particularly liked this blog entry because it brought up some taboo topics about large corporations, their ethical responsibilities, and the root of all evil, money. Money seems to be the one thing that drives us the most. I mean think about it, we get tickets if we speed, and tickets are money we have to pay. The law states that the worst ethical consequence (no killing anyone for drive 25 over the limit!) of speeding is giving our hard earned money away. When you literally break it down and think of things this way, it’s hard to deny that money doesn’t control our everyday lives. With saying all this, is it really surprising that corporations with put their ethics and morals aside to make a profit? It’s not. And a clear example of this is the obvious, cigarettes. Why do public relations and marketing companies continue to promote cigarettes when, as of 2012, we know for a fact cigarettes can do serious damage to your lungs and throat, and cause cancer. This is all factual information that has taken years to prove. But it has been done, and yet, all the major cigarette brands are still in business and doing well. In the whole scheme of things, the public relations press is doing so well, there are literally people out there paying $9 dollars to smoke something that will eventually kill them. Marlboro Cigarette company, where are your morals?

Avery Owens-Good Ol’ Product Placements

What a great topic! Product placement isn’t something I used to think about honestly until I became a Communications major. Product placement is something that is meant for you not to notice, only to notice subconsciously. Are you following me? I used to be a Fashion Design major years ago when I first started college. I used to always watch those live from the red carpet before the actual awards show. Joan Rivers used to host it, and the one question she would ask every woman is “Who are you wearing?” To me, as a fashion major, I found it intriguing but I always wondered why she asks that. Those celebrities are merely walking advertisements. It all makes sense now. It’s called product placement. These celebrities have to wear SOMETHING to a red carpet event, so these top brands have come up with a genius marketing plan about using celebrities to place their product, and in this case, WEAR it. Celebrities promote this product just by doing one simple thing, telling Ms. Rivers what brand she’s wearing. That’s it. I remember one year when Jennifer Hudson hated the little jacket she was wearing on the red carpet. But, it was fact that she had signed a contract with the designer that she wouldn’t take it off. Celebrities have always been the pawns in the product placement game. Another common example I’ve been seeing lately is the shout out of brands on talk shows. Do you think these celebrities really love those products or are they getting paid to love them? Sometimes you just wonder….

Whitney Selby-Secrets and Scandal

I liked this blog entry because it talked about celebrities and their right to privacy. The model Naomi Campbell being photographed leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting was a great example. Was the Daily Mirror justified in running this story? First off, the Daily Mirror is not considered a journalistic source. It’s a tabloid. It’s important to determine the difference. Tabloids tend to exaggerate and emphasize stories. In saying this, I don’t exactly mean that because it’s a tabloid running a story that isn’t fact checked it’s okay. In fact, I’m not saying that at all. I’m not exactly sure how tabloids came about, but they have shifted to the entertainment category as opposed to the alternative hard news category. Tabloids do not have a reputation of always being accurate and they are not a known source for getting news. Now, would The Washington Post run a story like that? I’m not really sure to be honest, but I can say that I’m pretty confident that The Washington Post is a little more strict in their ethical guidelines of what to publish and what to not publish. Also, The Washington Post has more of a standard to look up to, and what they print, has to be clear, concise, and accurate. That is their reputation. Reputation means a lot in the world of journalism ethics.

Priscilla Pauta- A Picture Tells Its Own Story

I’ll never forget September 11, 2001, when I watched Americans jumping from the Twin Towers on the television. It was on every channel. I cried the whole day. The thing is, I don’t think I would have cried nearly as much if I wasn’t watching the actual footage. Images and photographs are meant to catch a moment in history and time. The fact that photographs of 9/11 are considered controversial really bothers me. Priscilla, a graduate student, is talking about the issue in her ethics blog. I’m perplexed as to why it’s considered unethical in the first place. The photographer, Drew, was simply just doing his job, and capturing a moment of history in a photograph. Priscilla talked about how there are certain elements to what is done with the photograph that could put it over the unethical line. An altered photograph or a photograph of a tragedy sold for monetary gain are two factors in which could make an unethical situation. Altering a photograph to deceive an audience is unethical in a way. When it comes to gruesome photographs like this, we must remember that real things and tragedies happen everyday. To capture them with a photograph is not unethical. In fact, I can even put a bigger spin on it, and say to not share these photographs are unethical. The public have the right to information and 9/11 was most definitely an event that needed to be reported on. God Bless!

Blog Post #5

There are a couple of reasons why Polkin and The Suburban Journal were ethically justified in maintaining the neighbor’s privacy. The article ‘Doing the Ethical Thing May Be Right But It Isn’t Automatic’ brought to my attention the fact that most people would say they would always do the ethical thing as opposed to actually being put in the situation and having to act on it. In the bullying case, Polkin and The Suburban Journal attempted to protect the identities of the neighbors who cyber bullied a young girl who ended up committing suicide. Playing the devil’s advocate, I can justify this ethical standpoint with an ethical perspective of that of the whistleblower, possibly not being accepted for the neighbor outing. The article states that in certain situations and circumstances, the whistleblower is not always seen as a hero, and could actually be shunned from the group and be seen as breaking the cohesion. Now, I’m not making the assumption that Polkin and The Suburban Journal only care about their stance in society and among their colleagues. But it is a theory, and only that.

The ethical perspective of the Post I believe was that ethical principal of gradual erosion of moral values as opposed to one big leap of moral values. The article talks about a gradual decrease in moral values is easier to then once giant obvious leap. When it comes to the Post identifying and releasing the name of the neighbor, I guess the Post believed this was just the next step in an already damaged situation.

The issues of transparency, harm, justice, autonomy, privacy, and community all play a part in each ethical dilemma. After reading that article about the internet blurring the lines of plagiarism, I found the issue of ethical community is apparent. In this case, the community would be the new media generation students. Things are different now that students have grown up with the internet. There is tons of information just out there on the internet and most of it doesn’t have an author and because it is there, the new generation of students probably feel they can just take it and use it at their own discrepancies. The sense of community almost makes them slightly ignorant to what is ethically and morally right. Privacy plays a role in the article about the bullying. The Suburban Journal would not release the names of the neighbors responsible for the cyber bullying, yet the Post would. Besides the ethical perspectives I previously mentioned, I also think these ethical decisions were based on privacy. Since this cyber bullying family were not charged with a crime, The Suburban Journal may have rationalized releasing the names on the merit of privacy. What’s the point of releasing the names? Why not save the family some harassment and sham because after all, you are innocent until proven guilty. But as for the Post, well, maybe they let their emotions get to them a little, and wanted to expose this family. Or they justified it as them being journalists, and journalists ALWAYS deliver information to the public.

Out of all these ethical perspectives I find community to be the most compelling. There’s something to say about being outnumbered. Ten is always better then one, and more often than not, people will conform in a group, as opposed to their own individual opinion, despite their ethical conscience.

I don’t believe social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace don’t necessarily have the obligation to interfere with cyber bullying. The truth is, cyber bullying is just the new and modern way to bully people. Even if there was no social networking, bullying would still exist. In my own opinion, and I’m not a parent, but I think it comes down to parenting. If we can start there, I think we can avoid most bullying cases. Although, the cyber bullying culprit in the article was a grown woman, that’s just despicable in my opinion. Facebook and MySpace are merely just communities, and don’t have an ethical obligation to monitor and make the calls on what exactly constitutes bullying or not.