PressEthic

I am really not on an agenda to take apart stories on the front page of The New York Times this week but really—they keep handing out material. There it was, on Wednesday, September 21st, nestled cozily between stories of hurricanes, deaths and political tussles--a tease about Kate Moss’s cocaine addiction costing her a modeling contract.

Not to trivialize the dangers of drug use by celebrities and its trickle down effect on their fans (especially young ones) but it still struck me as oddly placed. Ironically, we were doing an exercise in one of my classes on Monday where, we had to prioritize stories according to their importance to a readership. Amongst these fictional stories was one about a Jennifer Lopez stalker- we teased it on the front page against our better judgment justifying it as a necessary evil.

Meanwhile, I realized that as an ethics student I could point fingers at The New York Times for running such stories on their front page. BUT-when the time came for me to take a decision even as a student, I choose to do the same thing myself. It was a scary realization.

Got me thinking-Is journalism just about catering to a certain readership/audience? Are we compelled to run stories about personal problems of the rich and famous right under reports of nine deaths in Iraq? In the mad scramble to increase circulation and acquire advertisements, are these trivial issues for newspapers? I have no answers as I am still pondering these questions.