The Code

Even when I attended sports camps at BYU when I was 13-years-old, I needed to sign an agreement to uphold the standards of BYU. I didn’t think about it much at that point, my mother just told me to sign and I signed. I usually would snicker a little bit at the modesty rules and then go about my 13-year-old life. Now, at BYU I still live under the BYU honor code and I plan to live by that code for the rest of my life. I plan to go into broadcast journalism and uphold a standard of excellence and honor.

This whole semester I have been learning about print journalism in this class and broadcast journalism in another class. It has been interesting to see how they overlap, because they really are the exact same thing. The delivery is what sets them apart and it is those deliveries that draw in specific students to those majors. Both print and broadcast journalism seek to find the truth and to share it.

It is important to remain honest when reporting. Only report that facts and not things that may be or are likely to be facts. This keeps journalists out of libel problems and keeps a journalist’s name clean. But obviously, fact checking and getting good sources of information is key.

Edward R. Murrow said, “to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.” As journalists, our credibility is all we have. One silly mistake and we can lose everything. One silly name inserted that didn’t really exist and no one will hire us. Our job is based upon being trusted. If we lose someone’s trust, then they probably won’t wait around for us to earn it again, they’ll just go to another source. We learned in my broadcast class that the anchors that are most watched are the ones that the audience feels like they can trust. But if the anchor reads something off the teleprompter that a journalist wrote and it turns out to be false, then he anchor is the one who takes the biggest fall.

Along with honesty is independence from the subject you are writing about. Even if a journalist thinks or knows that are independent, it still may appear to an audience that they are tied in. Just how the first guest speaker is class told us about writing about his son’s school. His son had nothing to do with the incident, but since he went to the school at all, the journalist appeared to be too closely linked to the subject on a personal level.

The topic came up in class about if we would be willing to go to jail to protect a source. I loved to avoid answering that question because I just cannot even imagine being in that situation. The interviews I plan on doing would be local, non-government, sports teams, or maybe if I am really lucky Hollywood stars. But this class has made me recognize the steps I need to take to avoid going to jail or losing my credibility. I plan to tell a source that if I end up in court, I will say their name. Though, I still do not desire to do any interviews that may lead to the courthouse.

I think a part of me loves this profession because it does seem to require perfection. There is the truth and there is everything else. You either get it right or not. It’s all a matter how much you are willing to work to find the real story. We learned about muckrakers who went undercover and risked their lives to find the truth, but what are we willing to do?

I really enjoyed in class when we talked about balance in writing. There are always two sides to every issue, but we addressed the issue of subjects having equal balance or not. Before this class, I felt like journalism was sort of without a soul. Because everything has to be given without bias, without personality, and with balance for each opposing side. But that’s not exactly correct. With certain topics, the information can lean one way and there’s nothing wrong with that. Now, we should not strive to be like the anchor we watched in class who totally lost it with the woman who rallied at a funeral, but it is okay to have human emotions. And also as we learned in class, we don’t have to totally separate ourselves from society because we are a journalist. We can have friends!

Whenever we would talk about proper proportion in class, I would immediately think about the tabloids. I will not lie, I love waiting in line at the grocery store and reading the headlines of the magazines. Do I really care if some actress got a horrible haircut or if there are rumors of him and her getting back together? No. But they still do amuse me for the 3 minutes wait and the store. The strange subconscious thing is that we expect that from magazines. When flipping through Seventeen magazine a few years ago I remember seeing an article about world hunger and thinking to myself “why is this in here?” But when I see an airy article on lipstick colors in a newspaper, I wonder the same thing. We expect newspapers to have the important information and to focus on that.

I have a lot of faith in journalists. The type of people that this profession attracts tends to be hard workers who sincerely want to do what is right. However, with the medium of print journalism changing, I fear that journalists may lose their place to electronic whiz kids who will write however they feel necessary. But that will only happen if we let it. Part of upholding a standard of excellence is doing what we can to preserve our industry. I don not mean to hold onto print, I just mean to do what we can to be at the front lines of going electronic with blogs, online sites, and new iphone apps. We cannot be left behind and to be left behind would be to let down our code of ethics.

The quote I based my bumper sticker project on was, “In America, a president reigns for four years, but journalism reigns forever” (Oscar Wilde). We need to make sure that is never doubted. Journalism is a reigning power in American and it was born that way. Printed papers is what united the citizens to fight back against the British in the early colonies.

For me, it all comes down to one thing; if a journalist writes for the right audience, then they can never stray too far from the path. Journalists are supposed to inform the public. I know that at this economic time, it can be hard because no paper want to lose advertisements and sometimes they just want to print the “popular” stories and maybe not the more “important” ones. But journalists must hold on to that standard. If the papers start telling the public only what they want to hear and not what they need to hear, then there really is no point. Facebook could probably do the same thing but much faster and for free. Excellence in journalism will come from staying true to the profession and the traditions therein. So what if there print paper dies and everything turn electronic? Journalism will still be alive as long as people are willing to find the truth and write it for the people. Even in tough times like this, keeping a perspective on what matters most is what will get us all through.

Last year I had the opportunity to go to LA with a bunch of BYU girls for a week and spend time with people from all over the country. We were with these people nearly 24 hours a day and got to know each other quite well. A particular bunch of college boys from the east coast were intrigued with our honor code. They would always run around and say “well what about THE CODE?” They would oftentimes make a joke out of it and try to make it relate to things like what pets were okay to have. But it really has made me realize that BYU is preparing us to easily live by ethical codes in the real world by having us abide by the BYU honor code now. I do not stress about upholding any journalism code of ethics because it is already a part of my life now.

Hats

We all have different “hats” we wear during the day. Sometimes we even wear more than one hat at a time. But challenge as a journalist, is which hat or hats do you wear? Well, we are told to be objective and to not allow our opinion to get in the way. This means, leave your religion, political, and sensitive hat at home. But the hat we should always be wearing? Our moral hat with all of its values.

Personally, I love to compartmentalize my life, so I like the idea of leaving hats at home. I just feel like there is no way to wear every hat at once and it just makes everything more stressful. Because with each hat, comes a different audience. If I wear my Mormon hat, I then have the LDS church to make happy. If I wear my BYU hat, I better not say anything good about the Utes. And if I wear my Oregon hat, I better because talking about all things green.

But religion is the most touchy topic of all. I loved the quote given in class about how religion is the most important thing, but also the least understood. Every journalist is afraid to write about religion in depth because if anything is published and it’s not 100% correct, then there will be thousands of letters and emails letting them know. Even if an article is correct, if there is some way for it to be perceived incorrectly, then buyers will be lost and enemies made.

Religious people will do anything to protect their religion. The United States was founded on religious freedom, wars are fought every day because of religion, and people even disown family members if they leave a religion.

But the thing is, everyone would benefit from knowing more about religion.

http://www.religionwriters.com/tools-resources/reporting-on-religion-a-primer-on-journalisms-best-beat This is a website with lots of links and tips on how to cover a religion beat and how to write if you are or are not a religious person.

Also, this is a fabulous site http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm A world religion comparison chart for kids!!!!!! How cool is that. Sometimes I just want to know the basic differences between religions and this chart has it all.

“The Most Dangerous Man in America” Reflection

• In your view, what is the legacy of the government actions documented in the Pentagon Papers? How have such actions influenced democracy and trust of government in the United States?

The legacy left by the US government after the Pentagon Papers is not good. It basically told Americans, “hey, we have been lying to you and doing a lot of illegal things and it has been going on for a long time.” “We seek no wider war” was a lie and the Presidents and everyone working at the Pentagon knew it. Ellsberg said that thousands of government people knew this was going on, yet no one leaked information until Ellsberg years later. If just a handful of people knew, than that would be one thing. But thousands knowing for years and only one leak. That does not promote any trust for Americans to feel towards the government.

• While being interviewed by television journalist Walter Cronkite, Ellsberg says the lesson he took away from his experience with the Pentagon Papers was that “the people of this country can’t afford to let the president run the country by himself without the help of Congress, without the help of the public.” How would you define the lesson or lessons of the Pentagon Papers and the events surrounding their release to the public?

I thought the story that Ellsberg tied in about his father falling asleep at the wheel was really cool. His father was not a bad man and he honestly loved his daughter and wife. But despite that love, he fell asleep at the wheel and allowed the car to crush the two women in his life. This is similar to any President. They may love America and want to do what’s best, but they can still make mistakes and they need support and assistance to be able to do what is truly right for the country. I think Presidents also have a little more fear in them since the Papers. Because leaks have happened before and they will happen again. So if a President feels like they are about to do something the public wouldn’t like, they may not do it because of the fear the Pentagon Papers has left.

• What role or roles did media play in Ellsberg’s success and/or lack of success in stopping the bombing and, ultimately, the war in Vietnam? How do media actions then compare to media war coverage now? How did the Pentagon papers change the role of the media in the United States?

Well the newspapers, The New York Times specifically, are what made this leak possible for Ellsberg and his effort to stop the war. The published volumes from the study and explained to the public what it meant. Whenever any story is as big as this, it invokes chaos initially. So when this story first was published, the government, the American people and other media sources didn’t know what to do.

• Max Frankel (New York Times Washington bureau chief during the Pentagon Papers era) reflects on his newspaper’s Supreme Court victory, saying, “The cry of national security does not justify censorship in advance.” In your view, under what circumstances do journalists have the right or responsibility to reveal classified information and under what circumstances should they refrain from doing so? Under what circumstances, if any, should they be prohibited from doing so by the government or by law?

If something illegal is going on, report it. If reporting the information will put lives in danger, don’t do it. I understand that it seems much more simple to be because I’m not in the thick of it. But the difference between revealing troop movements to the world and telling about past lies is very different. Though, lives being in danger, that can mean a lot of different things. Because what if a country is so outraged about wrongs that were done to them and then printed that they attack the US? Or what if troops from other countries are put in danger? Do you still publish? I have no idea, because news stories can cause chain reactions that are sometimes not foreseen. I know I would never want to be the trigger for something like that.

Unless the government wants to have an editor for every major newspaper in the country, deciding what can and can’t be published is difficult because there is so much grey. When a newspaper gets a good leak, they throw a party, but the government does damage control and looks for someone to fire. I think the only law that should be in place, is that if the information published would cause immediate danger to citizens, then it cannot be published.

• In your view, what would the effect on a free press have been if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the Nixon administration and prohibited newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, or if after publication The New York Times had been prosecuted under the Espionage Act ?

Free press would have proven to be a lie if the Nixon Administration had won. Our presses would only be free as long as the government was happy. Which sort of makes the press pointless. The entire goal of the American press from the start was to be a watchdog and to serve as a fourth estate. That cannot happen unless the press is truly free.

• In your view, would today’s major news media outlets be likely to make public the type of classified documents that The New York Times and other newspapers were handed in 1971? Why or why not?

I think the newspapers today would publish important information like the Pentagon Papers. They already feel confident they would not be sued because of what happened with the Pentagon Papers, and let’s face it, newspaper managers want papers to sell. Our media thrives on scandal and government scandal with hard evidence is a beautiful thing to any media company. Also, the media knows that Americans would want to hear the information. And if the information has already leaked to one paper, it won’t be long until it gets to another media source.