Ethics in Indy Journalism

Today's class focused on the ethics of independent journalism, and there were quite a few interesting points raised by Prof. Cohen and my classmates.

One of the biggest ethical dilemmas centered on Mayhill Fowler, a blogger for Huffington Post. Fowler gained access to one of Obama's political conferences that was closed to the mainstream media. After noting that others were recording the speech, Fowler broke out her own audio recorder.

During his speech, Obama referenced small town Pennsylvanians who become "bitter" and "cling to guns or religion" in response to the current state of our politics. Fowler caught it on tape, and realizing that Obama's comments could potentially be used against him, she published his entire speech so that readers could view the sentiments in their full context.

The dilemma is whether Fowler was ethically correct in recording the speech, let alone publishing it online.

I agree with many of the comments made in class regarding this issue. It is a journalist's duty to keep the government in check, not to protect politicians for fear of losing access to them. In this sense, I believe that Fowler did the correct thing by publishing the transcript.

I also agree with Prof. Cohen's argument that a politician should not be allowed to get away with saying one thing to one group of people, like large investors, and another thing to another group of people, like small-town voters. It's a journalist's job to make sure these types of discrepancies do not occur.

While Fowler took plenty of heat for publishing the article, I commend her bravery for both recording the speech and choosing to publish it online. I think her actions were admirable, and she certainly did the right thing by not burying the story merely because Huffington Post is so strongly pro-Obama.