PressEthic

The phenomenon of writing books among journalists is a civilized and positive phenomenon. It again enriches libraries and guides the audience to understand the world using a different method. Journalists’ memoirs or books are important records of a certain historic stage of a certain country or culture. If journalists’ books – especially the international journalists – are as accurate and truthful as possible and if they convey the reality deepness of their experience about a certain country, society or culture, it would definitely add as precious information as their timely news stories do.

In recent years, many journalists wrote many books and many readers read them. Should readers again – ohh poor readers – trust what is written in those books?

There were reporters, who got embedded with the US troops for just less than two weeks in Iraq, wrote books about their experience and the reality they did stories about.

Do you think nine days is enough to write a book about a new culture or country? Do you think you can give truthful information to your audience following this behavior? Does it really matter if you mislead and deceive your audience by publishing such books? Is it just about fame and money? If so, please don’t risk your life to be embedded in a dangerous situation for nine days because it does not help you to grasp all the details.

It is said that journalism serves business, but at the expense of readers. It is a treachery if you give wrong information to people. And those embedded journalists are lucky because it is very difficult to fact-check information as he or she was the only one who could live in a risky place. This is how they become the heroes; they are the ones who risked their lives.

Unfortunately, I could not get names or books. But I will try to get some names of journalists whose main goal behind their being front line journalism was to write a book very fast, publish it very fast and get money very fast.

Don’t you think this is another ethical dilemma?