Com Case Study

The case of the man taping basketball girls case in Waseca County took place in February 23, 2012. In this case, two men noticed a 58-year-old man was video taping West High School girls playing basketball game and the man was accused of filming a particular girl player in the basketball team. The girl’s father confronted the man with the camera but the man appeared to be nervous and he stuttered. Later on, the man was brought into West activities director Ken Essay’s office and the man said that he bought a new camera and would just like to compare the camera to his old ones. However, when Essay was looking through all of the videos that the man had taken before, he figured one video was the man sitting in an office-style chair masturbating. There were also many videos of other high school’s girls basketball games on the camera. When asked why he did this, the man just said he loved videotaping sports events. The police officers and Essay said they would continue investigating this man. When faced with this kind of case, journalists will be facing many dilemmas but there are two main dilemmas that they will have to focus on- whether or not to publish this news and whether or not to reveal this man’s identity to the public. The first dilemma that the journalists will face is whether or not to publish this news. According to the RTNDA Code of Ethics, it is important that profession journalists should recognize the public as their first obligation. Therefore, they have to commit to the public and provide them information that they are supposed to know. Because of this, the journalists may tell themselves that they need to publish the story of this video-taking case since they believe that the public has the right to know about this. Moreover, the RTNDA Code of Ethics also stated that it is important that the journalists pursue truth aggressively and here, the truth is telling the public of what happened in Waseca County. If they don’t tell the public about the Waseca case, then that means they’re filtering the news from the public. That is not being truthful at all and thus, the journalists should publish the news and present the truth to the public. However, the reason why the journalists may still be struggling of whether or not to publish is because of fairness. RTNDA and SPJ Code of Ethics stated that journalists need to present the news fairly and treat all subjects of news coverage with respect and dignity. According to the police officers of Waseca County, the man is still not convicted a crime because there is not enough proof proving that he was video taping a particular girl and there is no evidence in proving the man’s motives for doing this. If this man is still not convicted a crime, then he can be innocent anytime. If the journalists decided to release the news to the public, then he may be harmed and this will not be fair to the man. Also, it is important to look at the integrity in the case. Is the content of this news significant enough to be announced in public? The journalists may be asking themselves this question before deciding whether or not to put this in public. When deciding their choices, journalists will also have to look into the Potter Box to help them decide their choice. For instance, If I were a journalist, this is what I would do. To put it all together, I would use the Potter Box as one of my methods to determine whether or not I would want to publicize the story or not and I would use Code of Ethics and Principles from the Potter Box to determine my decision of whether or not to release the man’s identity. First, through the Potter Box, I would gather information about this case. I would ask the police officers of the details of what happened and I will interview the two men who saw what had happened. I will also ask the bystanders of what they saw and interview the girls that have been video-taped. These are all my facts and I will have to gather them all up. Next, I will look into the values of this case. If I present this case to the public, will I help ignite public interest? Does this story present integrity? Is it proximity or novel in any way? Does the public have the right to know and will this news present justice and fairness to the public and to the people in the news? After asking myself the values of this case, I would look at the principles. Principles such as Judeo-Christian Principle states about moral and respect to another person. The principle of Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance also considers fairness as the fundamental idea in the concept of justice and fairness means quantity. Therefore, I will look into these principles and decide if I should release the news. Last but not least, I need to ask myself whom am I loyal to. Am I loyal to my reader? Am I loyal to my company? Or am I loyal to myself. This will make a great difference. If I’m loyal to my company, then I might choose to release the story because it will help my company earn a great fortune. However, if I am loyal to myself, then I might feel like releasing this news will cause unfairness to the man and thus, I will choose not to publicize it. These are all the ways a journalist can look into when deciding whether or not to publicize the news. The second dilemma that the journalists will face is if they decide to release the news to the public, are they going to also release the man’s identity to the public. It is certainly hard to make a choice here because the journalists want to present the truth to the public but at the same time need to be fair to the people being presented in the news. According to the Code of Ethics, Journalists should tell the public whatever they know about the case. Therefore, the journalists should tell the public the man’s name and might also need to expose his identity. Moreover, the journalists might want to expose the man’s identity in order to serve public interest since other news media companies might not expose the man’s identity. If the journalists are the first to expose the identity than other journalists, then not only will the news ignite public interest, they will also be the first to present it and it will be proximity too. Therefore, by releasing the man’s identity to the public may attract more readers for the journalists and that they might also be the first to release the identity. At the same time, they are also presenting truth to the public. However, even if this is the case and even if this may bring a great fortune to the company, journalists still have to look at the moral aspect of the case. For instance, according to the principles of the Potter Box, the principle of Judeo-Christian states that “Ultimately humans stand under only one moral command or virtue; to love God and humankind.” It also states that “The command to love your neighbor is normative.” Judeo-Christian also propose unselfishness, other-regarding care and benevolence. Therefore, before the journalists release the man’s identity, it is crucial they ask themselves whether or not by doing this is moral or not. The man is not guilty yet and thus, by exposing his identity may harm this man as a person and that he may have to carry this harm with him for the rest of his lives. If he is guilty, then that’s another story but the police is still investigating at this point of time. Therefore, one journalist may ask “is it right to expose this man’s identity when he’s not found guilty yet?” Yet, another may also ask “but we are only presenting the truth and what we know to the public, is that wrong?” It seems like either way works so it really is up to the journalists and the editors to decide which route to take. Do they care more about business or self-moral? Do they rather have a great fortune out of this case than to protect a man’s reputation? Journalists need to ask themselves this and when they know which route to take, they will make the decisions. It is usually hard for the journalists to make a wise decision because whatever decision they make, there will always a pro and con to it. That is why they need to ask themselves many questions in order to narrow down their decisions. There are many methods out there that can help the journalists make decisions such as the RTNDA Code of Ethics, SPJ Code of Ethics, Potter Box, etc. These tools are not the solutions but they are methods in helping out the journalists. If the journalists use these tools wisely and ask themselves enough questions, then I believe they will eventually come up a wise decision.