Ethics

I feel like everything about any kind of journalism has a major focus on ethics. Probably because following ethical standards can make or break your career. I think the Code of Ethics put out by the Society of Professional Journalists is probably good to keep in mind: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

A big issue in regards to ethics that I've found most interesting is how ethical something is even if it's not illegal. There's a big grey area there that is kind of for anyone to determine, but obviously people have their own opinions as to what's ethical and what's not. Clearly, anything that's illegal probably isn't the most ethical, for many reasons. The difficult part is determining what's ethical even if it's legal. There are plenty of bad things that people do that are legal, but are they right? When I ponder this question it makes me grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because I was raised to have good standards an judgement that will prove to be helpful in a career of journalism. Having been taught to be honest and have integrity is something I knew would come in handy in life, so it makes sense how much it applies to the field of journalism.

I found this cool handbook online that has some good guidelines for good practices of ethics from NYU: http://journalism.nyu.edu/assets/PageSpecificFiles/Ethics/NYU-Journalism-Handbook-for-Students.pdf

A quote I like from this handbook is 
"The best defense against crossing ethical or legal lines is openness and honesty."
That's something I can definitely agree with.