Law & Ethics exercises

Scenario 1
You are interviewing a high government official about her involvement in a bribery scheme, when she is called out of her office. While alone, you notice some documents on her desk that appear to be related to your investigation. Would you read them? Take them? Ask her about them when she returns?

I would certainly not take the documents, that would be theft, completely unethical and illegal! But since there would most likely be legitimate public interest in this story I might read them quickly and then ask her about them point blank when she came back in and let her defend herself. Then I would print both sides of the story.

Scenario 2
Conditions at a local nursing home are known to be substandard. It’s privately owned, and efforts to gain admittance or information have failed. Your editor asks you to get a job as an
orderly and write a story based on your first-hand experiences.
Would you do it? Why or why not?

I had this exact situation happen to me, except I was on the other side! I worked in the media room for the Labour Party in London during the 2005 elections and a month after the elections were over I found out that someone I had been working very closely with was really a journalist making an expose for channel 4 on the Labour Party and their media machine. She used my image and my voice and my words and I felt completely betrayed. I had done nothing wrong legally or ethically but she had used a hidden camera and a mic to record some uneasiness I had about the job, something that I had confided in her under strictest of confidence and she put that in her documentary. I thought it was a pretty nasty and unethical way to obtain information.

So, I would not feel comfortable lying about my identity. Would I do all that I could to get a story, yes? But I have never felt comfortable while watching this kind of journalism and in only the most extreme cases of someone doing major harm, like Big Tobacco, does it not reek of moral ineptitude.

Scenario 3
You are writing a feature story and find some excellent quotes about your subject from another written source.
– May you use those quotes as if you obtained them yourself, or must you credit the other written source?
– What if you obtained the quotes from a
web site?

I come across this quite often while writing papers and if you do not credit the other written source you are plagiarising. From a website is trickier, although I will usually credit the website, just to be on the safe side.