PressEthic

This week, members of the Bush staff went to ethics class. It might seem apparent that government officials don’t give away government secrets to forward an agenda, but sometimes people need a refresher course.

This story made me think about journalism school and its courses in press ethics. It’s supposed to be equally obvious that journalists don’t lie. Nevertheless, some do. A good talking to by a press ethics professor might do them some good as well.

Journalism school has been targeted as a waste of time. For instance, there’s this article from May written by an angry freelance writer for Mediabistro that stuck with me. He thinks journalism school indoctrinates people into the mainstream media. I’m wasting my money! Blogs are the thing of the future, he declares.

Because we all take in the news every day, there are people that think they, too, could be a journalist if they wanted to. Some people do good work and we are benefiting from that. But that doesn’t mean that people who go to journalism school are wasting their time trying to get a handle on the “do”s ,“don’t”s and the gray matter in between while getting some practice towards better writing. If all you walk out of j-school with is the ability to write a nut graph, you weren’t paying attention.

We’re snickering because administration officials are back in school, learning that cheating in government is bad. But here’s another profession where some assume that anyone who has an idea and can get the votes can be a government leader - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, Ronald Reagan. For some, it’s natural, but I’m sure that there are quite a few people across many professions that need help addressing their own ethical issues. Those of us who have the opportunity to discuss these issues should consider it time and money well spent.