Ethical Guidelines in Journalism: Jayson Blair's Plagiarism Scandal

Ethical Guidelines
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Ethical Guidelines in Journalism
Journalists are led by ethics which detail how they make major career decisions. For instance, how they decide on the news to write every day and how they decide to expose news considered national secrets. Journalistic ethics guide reporters to only seek truthful information and act in ways depicting integrity. Several ethics codes exist for journalists, including the society of professional journalists ethics code (SPJ) and the New York Times ethical journalism book. The essay will evaluate Jayson Blair’s scandal from an ethical viewpoint, the role digital technology played in the scandal and how it be put under regulation, and guidelines that can be put in place to alleviate similar incidents in the future.
Jayson Blair was New York Times reporter who became famous for the wrong reason. He was accused of committing plagiarism in 2003, breaking ethical conduct in journalism. Blair was said to have stolen real-time information and fabricated stories from newspapers. The action was described as an enormous betrayal of trust from journalists. The entire scandal held a more significant ethical aspect than legal. Ethical journalism should be truthful and accurate, and journalists must take personal responsibility by using original sources and verifying all sources of information before releasing them (SPJ, 2014). Blair’s scandal presented a massive unethical stance, which will be remembered for years to come.
Digital technology played a significant role in enabling unethical acts. He used a laptop and a cell phone to access new and real-time databases from brand-new articles he used to steal. He exploited the technologies that are used in the modern world to enable access to information. The use of digital technology in journalism can be regulated to ensure that such scandals do not erupt. One of the ways it can be regula...