Journalistic Independence

The group’s metaphor with the cookies and bribing of the students as journalists was a cool metaphor, and they were great cookies.  I have found that independence in journalism is a very fine line, and it seems like sometimes it can be a hard line to walk.  Journalism has an allegiance to bringing truth to the public, and they need to maintain that allegiance to the best of their ability.

Like every week, I read two articles that are related to this topic.  The first one is located at this url:  http://articles.latimes.com/1999/dec/20/news/mn-45830 and obviously it talks about the controversy surrounding the coverage of the Staples Center at the turn of the century.  Wow, what a stupid thing to do.  Some people though….

The second article that I read is located at this url:  http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/journos_bribe.html .  It’s more of a blog than an article, but it still has relevant information in it.  It talks about how easy and convenient it can be for people to buy coverage from journalists, and how it makes sense what they are doing.  I can totally understand the logical implications of paying for coverage, it’s just like advertising, but it’s always those darn ethics that get in the way.

Personally, I think paying for journalistic coverage is horribly wrong and immoral, but I understand that it goes on and is very hard to stop.  It’s something that I would like to stop, but it’s kind of a giant.