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So I think I determined after this that I write waaaaaaaaay too much and rant more often than not, as everyone's blogs are clear, concise and to the point: It was a pleasure to read back through these posts and see what everyone was thinking, and it made me rethink some of the views I took on some of my own decisions.

But that's enough about this...lets move on, shall we?

So Jon DeBenedictis' analysis of the cyber-bullying on Saturday, February 4th was interesting. While we both took on the role of Sissela Bok for Pokin's article in the Suburban Journal, he shed light on the role of the Post in a more interesting light: The idea of Utilitarianism actually fits this whole segment really well, since the Post's actions in naming the assailants could very well be deemed Utilitarian is many different ways:  The first way would be since its a greatest good mentality, as not only do people find out who the people were and justice could be exacted in the public domain, but also the Post comes out as the paper who found out the names first.  This could be looked at as unwavering dedication to the truth, justice, and transparency for the best outlook on society.

It also makes sense that this could be looked at in the Utilitarian sense of the "least amount of pain," as unveiling the names causes civilian search actions to cease at that point, as well as stop the assailants if they ever decided to bully again. 

I do agree with Jon's final thoughts on the matter - I still think that Pokin was right in how he handled the situation, as it was sensitive and we shouldn't immediately deem them guilty by throwing the bully's names into articles and pointing fingers.  Jon's thoughts of Utilitarianism do make more sense than my use of the Categorical Imperative as a model to view the situation from the Post's point of view. 

I also agree with his view on social media - The moderation of indecency on social media and networks shouldn't be left to the ethical judgment of the owners of the site, but rather the people who use it.  It's not that hard to click the "remove post" button on Facebook - if people want drama, don't click it.

Lucy Cox's post on Friday, January 27th delved into the PRSA code of conduct overhaul and the issues that they've had with their definition.  She goes in depth to describe that the original definition was broad - and I mean "pimp" and "matchmaker" broad: The definition fit both personalities easily.  What I enjoyed about this blog was that she addresses that all of these codes are just that: Codes.  While we have them and they hopefully keep people in place and protected, we still find that we can omit a following to these codes and do our own thing - if anything, a code could be used as an excuse, as she describes Chapstick's Facebook dilemma and how they finally apologized for deleting negative posts simply by ducking behind the Facebook code of conduct in that they were removing negative posts.  I think Lucy hits home hard with the issues that are discussed in the article, and how they don't really "have much to do with false advertising, misleading and half-truths."  Instead, the men and women of the PRSA are worried about paying interns and supporting dictators.  Finally, her analysis of the three PR definitions was great, although she did put a bit of extra scrutiny on "profit."  While I think the ethical arena is important, the work of PR is still a business, and money will still be made.  This aside, Lucy does still bring up a good point in that the first definition is solid and regards only ethics as its main "engine" of sorts, as opposed to a monetary thing.  This is something great that we should strive for more, and Lucy points that out.

Liz Cross' blog on January 7th makes me think back to some early philosophy classes I had undergone in my undergraduate days.  She begins by addressing the ethical dilemma of a student posing as an SAT test taker for other high schoolers.  The 19 year old Samuel Eshaghoff's actions bring Liz to an interesting realization: no one can trust Eshaghoff at such an early age, as he'll always be remembered for his fraudulent activities, but as well, the cheating students go unnamed and unknown.  She lists what a university could do to exact reparations for unethical test-taking by using stand-ins, but it seems a bit harder to see a University's reactions, as they generally have smaller classes, and standardized test-taking simply has a moderator for a multitude of students - I think she should have looked at the situation from the standpoint of high schools, as they're the students and systems more open to using the standardized test format.  I also like how Liz brings up a great situation of plagiarism in a professional setting - her client's situation in regards to using their daughter's song is something of an ethical situation.  I do think that Liz should have gone a bit deeper into the dilemma and used some of the models we had come across in the reading, as it would have really given us a good dichotomy of how the situation could have unfolded, instead of bringing up a random situation and comparing ethical processes to unfold the cashier-incorrect change problem.  She does bring one final note that does ring true to me: it takes a team to come up with the right decision, as it helps us look at an ethical dilemma from more than one point of view and really utilize the democratic communications ethics method.

Julien du Plessis' blog on Secrets (January 13th, 2012) was a good lesson in the uses of the Bok models and the Utility principles.  He uses the case study of Uganda's Monitor publishing a molestation photo, and the repercussions they faced in doing so.  Before going further, I should note that Julien makes a wonderful point in the very beginning that the most when deciding to release information, one should consider the "level of the secret," "who will be impacted," and "whether or not the secret will allow others to use it for harmful reasons."  After going in depth on the reaction that the Ugandan justice system incites, Julien brings his own views to the table and uses both Bok and Mill.  Would jail-time be worth the exposure?  How much are you willing to risk on a photo like this being run in a paper where their politics are hunting anything that makes them look bad?  He makes a good point that the paper's decision to release the photo was great for two reasons: it unveils this information and it also keeps anyone from finding out in the future that they withheld information of a great magnitude.  Julien mentions something interesting at the end of his piece: media professionals must struggle with getting entangled in secrets.  He states that he thinks "the only way to avoid getting entangled in secrets is to not dig for information," but I have to disagree with him: secrets are something that are part of the job, and with secrets come those who don't want you to know.  Unfortunately, it's a necessary evil: much like decision we have to release said secrets when we know them.

Jeff Crane's blog on the September 11th Photo (January 21st, 2012) was an interesting viewpoint of the controversial photo of the man jumping from the building on September 11th.  What I enjoyed about this blog was how the code of the Society of Professional Journalists matched very well to the statement given by Richard Drew regarding the controversy revolving around the photo.  What is striking about this controversy is how people do take both sides in that the photo shouldn't be published because it's something that should not be seen, but should be published because it has helped family members track down the missing family member that resembles the jumping man.  Jeff makes note that not only was the SPJ code a good one to utilize, the placement they chose for the article made it more "palatable," since we weren't bombarded with the image of a man falling to his death from A1.  Jeff also does well in using two other methods to interpret the decision of Richard Drew: Utilitarianism (oh Mill, you devil you) and something a bit different: Communitarianism.  While Jeff argues that the Utilitarian view can be used as a great educator for the pain of having to see this photo, the Communitarian view intrigues me, since I feel no one really poked into this view too much, maybe since it's so close to Utilitarianism, as it emphasizes thinking in terms of the community, especially since the photo helped people identify and locate their missing family.  Overall, I liked Jeff's decision to include communitarianism on account that it really does make the photo a power tool.

Write or Wrong?

Like most things that we encounter in life, there's always more than one side:  Let's take the situation at hand: A child has committed suicide and you have to report about it.  So how do you go about doing this?  According to Malone's article regarding Megan Meier and cyber-bullying, there are two ways to take this argument. 

Before I get into anything, I do have to say that I wish (and this is solely in a perfect world) that social media and social networks could have a filter or a way to intervene in situations of cyberbullying - my only real qualm with this method is that how does anyone know what is bullying or what isn't? Furthermore, why don't those being bullied just stop using their account, or start a new one, without the bullies in question.  You can always unfriend people, delete posts, or just flat-out block comments/filter comments. 

To be honest, when you look at the situations involving a girl being bullied on myspace or anyone being bullied on Facebook, the easiest way to divert attention from the bullying and move on would be to just shut down the old account and make a new one. 
Problem solved.
But sometimes there are cases when people search and try to find others that can give vital information to find out who the person is.  This is when it's starting to go too far.

If it's a minor case of bullying, then generally, changing your account status would solve the problem.  Its at a severity level that people don't really care.  If something, say loyalties, were to really become a main factor in the bullying, then you might have people researching, investigating, and trying to locate the bullied child.  This is when something needs to be done. 

So The Suburban Journals writer Steve Pokin, a 30 year veteran of journalism, took the approach of writing the story without identifying the neighbors, but by writing a story about a girl's heartache and two parents who were grieving.  I look at this from Bok's point of view - First, lets look at our own personal gains and ethics:  We could say as Pokin that we are writing this from a standpoint of justice - we need to let the world know that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with.  But what about the lack of crimes and allegations?  What about the parents' point of view. 

The next level would reveal from the opposing side, the neighbors in question of being identified, as terrified as to what would happen if they were singled out and punished as an example not from the law-abiding hands of the law, but from the rough hand of the common public.  Let's face it - there are men and women that wanted to beat, maim, and even kill the neighbors that did this to the child. 

Since we're still at an ethical dilemma, we should see what would happen if we take other points of views - the police don't know how to treat it, since they don't have any crimes they can tag onto the perpetrators; the common man would want to strike down those who would do something like that to a child, as well as those who protect their names.  But was that a bad thing for Pokin to do?  Unveiling those names could have still provided more disaster on a secondary and tertiary level:  What if someone used those names to find them and harm them in an act of vigilantism. 

The best thing to do is go from the other side and see how that would work out - in this case, the Post identified the neighbors after it finally appeared on the blogosphere.  Let's take something like Kant's Categorical Imperative and put this to use, as that we would want to treat those the way we want to be treated.  Based on this, we could say in defense of the Post that they merely identified the neighbors first off because they were already identified, and had false information added.  SImply put, if I were being identified in this situation, I would have wanted the whole truth, and no false allegations added to my name.   Really, the Post could be following Kant's imperative by the fact that we should know - that we would want to know anyone else's name, and therefore there shouldn't be any reason to withhold those names.

Honestly, I find the first situation more compelling of the two I have worked out:  while transparency is clear in Kant's method, as well as Justice (we known the truth, and we want Justice for their crimes), the situation of harm becomes the biggest problem - people are sure they want to hurt these neighbors as a whole, and that they are willing to tarnish a man's journalistic career because he is being loyal to his code of fairness - he has simply presented a story, and explained a situation that is a problem, and instead of people doing something about the situation, they wish to deal with the problem at hand - the unknown neighbors.  in a case like this, Autonomy is key - the actions of the journalist was to keep people safe (in my opinion), and as well, since no laws were found broken, why violate these people's privacy?  While they were not necessarily punished in public, the severity of the situation will be found on their shoulders (that is, to say, that they aren't sociopathic and devoid of all emotion). 

Really, I think of community here as failing a big, despite their desire to right the wrongs done against the child:  While a girl died from this, an example needs to be made, but as the saying goes: an eye for an eye makes the world blind.