Final Paper-710

A Global Leader

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The global leader that I have chosen is Katharine Graham. After her hubby perished in 1963, she became the Washington Post's distinctive leader. Her father, Marc Meyer, a banker who bought the Washington Post in 1930, influenced her leadership style. Graham was well-known for backing her journalists' zealous search for the truth, particularly in the aftermath of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate affair (Asirvatham, 2001).

Challenge she encountered

For the first time, the courts imposed a judgment for prior restraint of the freedom of the press when the New York Times published its three-part story on the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers were handed to the Washington Post on June 16 by Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower. The question became whether or not the Pentagon Papers should be made public by the Washington Post. The board of directors and lawyers decided that not publishing was in the company's best interests. The order against the Times meant that if the Post released the papers, it would be considered insulting to the judge and illegalMoreover, the Post had to evaluate its financial situation. The underwriters' arrangement with the Post said that if the Post was subjected to criminal proceedings, the underwriters would be released from the arrangement.

Katharine Graham had the last say. In her memoirs, Katharine Graham mentions. "There are several ways to damage a newspaper," an acquaintance countered. Katharine Graham made the decision to make the papers public the next morning. Although legal action was taken against the Post, the Post was allowed to continue printing the Pentagon Papers due to its ability to offer evidence of the past exposure of confidential material and the fact that no war plans were included in the documentation.

Ethical

Katharine Graham is torn between whether or not to release material obtained from a "whistleblower," whether or not to go against the US government, and whether or not to do something against her workers. According to Weiskopf and Willmott (2013), Ethics and moral behaviour examine moral orders and principles by which people identify themselves and others. Furthermore, they asserted that the man is moral in this circumstance, but the organization is immoral, making it morally acceptable to expose the truth since the truth is moral.

References

Asirvatham, S. (2001). Katharine Graham. Infobase Publishing.

Weiskopf, R., & Willmott, H. (2013). Ethics as critical practice: The "Pentagon papers", deciding responsibly, truth-telling, and the unsettling of organizational morality. Organization Studies, 34(4), 469-493