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.
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