The Walter Cronkite School kicked off its weekly Must See Mondays speaker series last night with an investigation of journalistic ethics through a case study of Rupert Murdoch’s empire.
Tim McGuire, the Frank Russell Chair for the Business of Journalism, used the recent News Corp. scandal as an example of the ethical leniency that is spreading through today’s journalism industry. He drew several lessons from this example to be applied to journalism in America.
McGuire said that too many readers fail to value celebrities’ humanity and right to privacy.
“Readers, you own responsibility for rampant, inhuman, privacy-invading celebrity coverage,” he said. “When you start devaluing human beings just because they’re celebrities, it becomes very easy to slide down that slippery slope into the ethical muck.”
Murdoch’s News of the World journalists were accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities and politicians. The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that senior staff both knew of and supported the hackings. Individuals are still being arrested and charged in connection with the scandal.
McGuire said today’s news organizations, like News of the World, are too heavily influenced by governmental whims. Rather, he says, journalism’s first commitment must be to accurately represent the truth.
He added that the phone-hacking techniques used by Murdoch’s News Corp. were the result of a “culture of wrong” in the News of the World newsrooms and that such a culture leads to unethical journalistic behavior.
“Any editor who approves controversial scoops and doesn’t know their source is either an idiot or lying through his teeth,” McGuire said.
McGuire praised The Guardian and its dogged persistence in exposing the News Corp. scandal.
“Hearing that tale makes me want to stand up and salute the power of the courageous, relentless, duty-bound press,” he said.
Journalism junior Emily Johnson said McGuire’s presentation will make her more cautious as a journalist.
“It really made me rethink reading celebrity gossip,” she said. “I don’t really know where the source comes from, and it makes me wonder where they got their information.”
Graduate student Jerilyn Forsythe also said that she had reservations about celebrity news because of consumers’ lack of responsibility.
“I didn’t realize news was so connected with the government,” she said. “There’s definitely too much canoodling between the government and media.”
McGuire warned that such an association between media and other professional outlets could have dire consequences for the future of journalism.
“Old-guard people like me are often accused of overreacting to these ethical transgressions,” McGuire said. “When we see them as a slippery slope, we are told we don’t understand where journalism is going.
“In fact, I think I do know where it’s going, and I don’t like it.”
Contact the reporter at chloe.brooks@asu.edu
