Contemporary Media and Its Ethical Dilemmas

Throughout the whole semester fall-2019 our taken course MSJ 11402 Ethics in Media and Communication, we learned the basic base on ethics and its relationship with media. Beside this in order to our syllabus we were assigning to watch some movies which ware mainly based on contemporary media and its ethical dilemmas. Sometimes those movies come out some conflicted situation. And our final assignment was to give an article on contemporary media and its ethical dilemmas: a cinematic portrayal. On this article I will try to express my understanding and trying to connect the dilemmas in the movies.

The Role of Ethics in Media

In this article I will try to find out the ethical dilemmas and connect with the role of journalism ethics. Actually, ethics is what we believe and in media ethics present and remains. It always has been a matter of constantly inventing and altering fallacy to introducing new social and technological conditions. Media in ethics is a revolution and it must be open to the future. Now a day’s investigating journalism open the new ways of ethics in media. Ethics is not just a theoretical document. We take the dominance. How we act and reacting with the new and different situation. As a journalists, teachers, students and ethicists, we need to create a bridge to the old to new. This practice is been followed in the newsroom now a days.

Exploring 'The Insider'

Now come to the movie section, in the movie Insider “The value of investigative journalism and a free media for exposing threats to health is well covered. Beside the movie argue the question of where and when the mainstream media was free to act in the public’s interest? And it is one of the dilemmatic observations of mine.

In this movie we can see that the influencer or dominator or barrier of journalism ethics and professional journalism by the corporate level. While the movie is a must-see for anyone interested in media because it explores the argumentative relationship between corporate interests and independent journalism, it also poses a question anyone which will be very hard to answer: Are we sacrifice the well-being of your family to tell the media something you knew? And if so, would it be ethical despite the dangers and threats?

Moral Conflicts in 'The Year of Living Dangerously'

In ‘The year of living dangerously’ movie can we identify a moral situation in the film faced by any character? What questions does this dilemma raise, and are there answers? This was one of my angels to identified point to cover. Guy Hamilton’s dedications to his job highlight him to ethical and moral conflicts when getting secret information about the PKI. And another ethical issue raised when he had to make a choice in between his Career and the British woman he fell in love with. And hare is the dilemma create. Here this point his dilemmatic situation was his career and love.

Thus “we saw that this raises an ethical question the ethical, what is the nature of human love, trust, commitment and loyalty, and how it conflict with a professional journalist’s ethical commitment to objective “truth-telling”?

Navigating Ethical Decisions

Through our discussion, we found that there is “right” way to make this decision, nor take the decision blindly. The line between protecting the story and the collective is blurry; it is up to us as individuals to serve our profession the best way we know how and in alliance with our code of ethics. Serious truth-telling will almost always harm someone. Though in the code “seek the truth and report it” offers an unproblematic defense for Guy’s reaction in using the top secret information Jill gave him, and another journalism ethics principle “minimize harm” also conflict with this decision because he put both Jill’s and his life in danger. Here, we can see the dilemma and the struggle for Guy’s emotional awakening.

Comparative Analysis of Ethical Approaches

In those two movies, both of the films have journalistic ethical question in a broader way. But this article just on the dilemmas I found from those movies. Plowshares, in The Insider, Bergman worked very hard to protect his source, though he wasn't always successful in protecting him from harm. Bergman was frustrated multiple times because he realized he was being refused to regards by CBS corporate. Bergman did not omit harm, he was trying his best to minimize it by never counseling Jefferey Wigand. But we see the different stand to Guy Hamilton in “the year of living dangerously”. Where, he was not as much as concerned about his source Billy. It was an unethical approach by a professional Journalism.

Conclusion: Cinematic Reflections on Ethics

So, at last I can say that those movies ware represent the ethical dilemmas and I am trying to discuss it through the article.