Ethical Guidelines

The ethical guidelines in media relate to problems, practices, and norms of today's digital news.  Digital news media includes online journalism, blogging, digital photojournalism, citizen journalism, and social media.  Being able to see these representations of media has allowed me to see how media practices have transformed.  It has changed from individuals who are actually in the field of journalism, who actually acquire the information regarding a topic and applying rules of behavior based on what is morally good or bad, to any individual in society giving their personal opinion on an issue with no regard on what is morally correct or not.  It seems like the public is more concerned with getting out their perspective in regards to a situation rather than prioritizing the facts.  

I still believe utilizing ethical guidelines is of the utmost importance because it will separate fact from belief.  It would convert the chaos caused by the interactive and immediate publishing's of articles by citizens into a calm, collected, intellectual representation of one's thoughts that had factual content as a reference.  Ethical guidelines would also allow for an objectionable point-of-view.  I've read multiple posts that only cover an individual's side of the story and not the organization's, or only one group of people's views and not the others.  If ethical guidelines were established for the public involvement of digital media, we could possibly obtain a much more intellectual cyber space.

Ward, S.J.A.  (2010).  Digital media ethics.  Center For Journalism Ethics.  Retrieved from

          http://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/