Truth & Journalism

The first obligation for a journalist is to seek the truth in all news stories. It is important that the reporter get all sides of the story, and not take sides or bias towards the other source. It is not the journalists objective to state his or her opinion in the story, their job is to just state the facts with human sources, quotes and data to support the story.

Getting the facts straight is very important, even if the journalist accidentally stated the facts incorrectly it can cause major harm to the journalist and the news company. Misleading the audience is most definitely a big NO, NO in journalism. That is one of the problems in the media today. It can cause a law suit against the journalist for liable, slander annotations. I have always been taught if you think providing evidence in a story will harm someones safety, you may think before writing or publishing it in the paper. It is always safe to ask your editor or news director first before publishing anything that may harm someones reputation or safety.

Another problem in the media is making sense of the facts. I have seen many news stations state facts, but in a way that have made others look bad in just the way they have stated or rearranged the wording in the story. This is not a good thing, but can increase viewers to the story, which will take us back to the ethical side of journalism. Is it better to get viewers/readers or telling accurate reliable news to the audience; stating the truth? As for journalist, we must inform the audience with the truth and not any intuitive form of bias, because then your not doing your job as a journalist.

From the book "The Elements of Journalism" it states to journalist to, "Give citizens identifiable sources and verify the information, highlighting what is important to know and filtering out what is not. Rather than expanding the time to sort through information themselves,people need sources that tell them what is true and significant." Amen, I agree with quote from the book, to state facts and get rid of the falsity within the story, because people want the truth and not made up lies.


Here are some examples of biases in journalism: