Journalistic ethics
Clive Crook of The Atlantic has an interesting take on WikiLeak’s handling of the documents on the Afghanistan war. In the piece, Crook draws a parallel between WikiLeaks and the Rolling Stone article on Stanley McChrystal.
A few weeks ago the McChrystal scandal was in the news. I asked a few journalist friends about it. “Suppose you had the story that Hastings had. But also suppose that you thought McChrystal was a great general, that the war was worth fighting, and he would have to resign if you reported what his team had said. Wouldn’t you feel some qualms about writing the story?” Most of my friends said that they might, but that good journalists suppress such thoughts because it was not their job to worry about it. Yes, I thought. So whose job is it, then?
I’m sympathetic to Crook here. The consequences of releasing this sort of information has to be a consideration for any reporter. On the other hand, if a reporter’s choice of stories is framed by her view that the “war is worth fighting” we could end up with a very subjective perception of the conflict.
-Luke
Photo by Flickr user The U.S. Army used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Related posts:
ShareComments
Leave a Reply
