Week 3: Student Response to Discussion One and Two

ThursdayJan 25 at 1:42am

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I believe that airing the diabetes treatment video along with the announcement about pharmaceutical brochures would violate journalism ethics. One of the main points our text makes is that making deals for financial gain is not okay. Our network would be showing a very clear bias towards this pharmaceutical company. While this is certainly a good business proposition, and one that could be mutually beneficial for both companies, I cannot say that it is a good ethical decision.

I think that it would be okay to air the broadcast without the announcement about the brochures. I do not think, however, that the pharmaceutical company who spent time and money producing the video would be okay with this. They would lose out on a lot of advertising, which is the reason that they wanted to make the announcement in the first place. I do not think that there is an alternative plan that would be in the financial interest of either party or violate journalism ethics by creating a bias.

If the pharmaceutical company wants to air the video on this specific network, they should be told to buy advertising on it. While this is the more expensive route to take, it would be a decent business plan if their advertisements ran alongside the broadcast about diabetes treatment. This would also prevent any journalism ethics from being broken. As a final bonus, it is more likely that people would see the commercials on television than they would be to go out and pick up the brochures. This may be the more expensive route, but surely it would be in the best interests of both the pharmaceutical company and the news network.

Source:

Jacquette, D. (2007). Journalistic ethics: Moral responsibility in the media. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.