Allayah: Don’t Forget the Ethics

By Allayah Beamon

February 8, 2016 @ 1:40 PM PST

Don’t Forget the Ethics

     In a society that is based on integrity, honesty, accuracy, and relevancy it’s truly detrimental for one to diminish those set and stone code of ethics within the journalism world. After watching the film, “Shattered Glass” it is explicitly shown how imperative it is to follow the code of ethics when trying to be a successful journalist rather than creating or inventing your own methodologies of producing written material.

   One rule for journalism I will never forget is, “DO NOT FABRICATE OR PLAGARIZE”!

When a writer does such a thing, the penalties and consequences can be extremely severe.

In the film, particularly the main character Stephen Glass played a horrendous role because he an aspiring journalist, who only got his big break by fabricating a story, and making it colorful. For the average person reading his pieces, the story sounded incredible, the details were spot on, and the stylistic language and format what strategic and creative; but however the story was not at all true, many parts were added for dramatic affect which made his overall story more interesting.

     That wasn’t the only story he fabricated almost 50, articles that were pressed and published.

In my opinion the fact checkers, were so amused by the stories that they slacked in doing their job. Glass had fans, and a strong following of people inside the company and regular outside civilians, who all believed and trusted his work, was 100 percent true.

     No one ever suspected him to have made up all these stories, but it became an addiction. He couldn’t stop making up colorful pieces, because he craved the smiles, cries, and laughter of his readers, he dwelled in the audience feedback and embracement after someone read his article. It made him feel useful, and valued to know his voice was being heard.

     Although he knew they were lies, many others didn’t, until one story was questioned and his explanations were adding, and his details were becoming misconstrued, one of the editors at the company went deeper into researching Glass’s accuracy on this particular piece and Glass thought he had covered every track but he missed and spot. Glass was never able to provide any verified sources to support the information in his claims and in the article.  When the executives had proof of his lack of honest journalism skills, they interrogated him, but he still wouldn’t confess to all of it. He wanted to be the best so bad that he risks his entire career by doing illegal things to do so.

       To be a great journalist, you do need great stories but the best way to write about them is when you actually experience them, therefore the story is real, authentic and fresh. Unless you are trying to go into fictional genre writing, in journalism your information and reporting has to be true. It can cause one their reputation, their livelihood, their career, and ultimately their