First off, let me say, I really hate snow & winter and cold in general. My ethics class was cancelled this week because winter storm Janus dumped 12 inches of snow on us and right now, it's -10 outside!!
In my future career, hopefully on E! or Access Hollywood, the ethical secrets that would probably come across would be small things like a celebrity baby gender or how a star is doing after plastic surgery. I don't really see why those things matter, but in the world of celebrity news, it's all about who gets the exclusive interview or who gets the story out first. However, I wouldn't consider it to be hard news, and is it really all that life changing for the public to know if Jennifer Aniston is going to be having a baby boy or baby girl?
However, in the field of celebrity gossip, I think the biggest story was Michael Jackson's death. Dr. Conrad Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter of Jackson for not properly monitoring the dose of propofol he had given hours before he died. Was that ethical? No, but it took months for the investigation to find out about Dr. Murray's actions. Should the way that Michael Jackson was killed been kept a secret?
One of the reasons in my opinion as to why it should have been kept secret is because of just how many people want to see Conrad Murray dead. While I agree that losing the King of Pop was a huge loss to the music and entertainment industry, I don't think it is right to have the man who killed him executed. This again, takes us back to morals and values. Ethically, his doctor should have kept things like the nightly injections of propofol confidential.
I feel that the best method to solving this kind of an issue would be through the use of Bok. Bok faces three questions, number one being, what is the gut reaction? My gut reaction to Michael Jackson's death was shock, while many others were outraged, surprised, upset, even angry. Secondly, is there another option? News was going to spread eventually that Michael Jackson was killed, but the timing was a huge factor. Entertainment news outlets were on the scene of his house not even 20 minutes after the phone call went to dispatch for an ambulance. Thirdly, how will the public react? The public reaction to the death of Michael Jackson was all over the place. Many people were crowded outside the hospital waiting on the verdict of wether the King of Pop was dead or not. Days after, people were shaken up and still not handling the stress of it all. The biggest factor in this story though, is how did the children handle it? Was this the right way to report that something had happened to someone's father, son, brother? The final step in Bok's process is to look at the best choice from the outcomes and to go with that, but is there really a best choice here?
Another route that one could go with this story would be Mill's Valuation Hedonism. Mill's Valuation Hedonism is, in basic terms, what outcome will give the most pleasure or least pain? Dr. Murray was sentenced to four years in prison, but got out only after two years due to jail overcrowding. This brings up another ethical issue. Why do celebrities seem to always get off the hook easier than your average person? Paris Hilton served a small amount of her time as well. Why do we allow people who make obscene amounts of money and who are in the public eye get off from crimes that are not acceptable if you or I were to commit one?
Aristotle's Golden Mean makes the most sense in this ethical case. Aristotle focuses on happiness being the ultimate good and picking the middle of two extremes. Aristotle focuses on the actor and wants to know if the person is being the best they can be. Was Dr. Murray only just doing his job or were there outside sources that wanted to kill Michael Jackson? Of course, we have no idea.
I think criteria wise, I would try to decide if the information goes for or against all six of the competing values, transparency, justice, harm, autonomy, privacy, and community. The biggest issue in this case is privacy. Were there moments that Michael Jackson and Dr. Murray had that they didn't get along? Were there those behind the scenes incidents where Dr. Murray had something against Michael Jackson? Did Michael Jackson want to die? These are all questions that right now are unanswered, but they are in fact ethical issues. The way that information comes out these days, especially in tragic events, becomes spewed at us for no reason other than that news outlet wants to be the first outlet to break the story. Think about this, when Michael Jackson died, many news outlets were reporting that it was suicide, someone had killed him, he died of natural causes, he was sick...nobody knew the truth. What needs to happen is the media should only report on what they know to be the truth and only the truth.
As a media professional, I think getting entangled in secrets is just inescapable. The media will always have someone who gives them information and then decides that they want it to be off the record or not spoken about. As a media professional though, sometimes secrets have to come out for the good of the story. It's like the things that our parents told us when we were younger. If someone you know tells you that they are hurting themselves or someone is hurting them and you promise not to tell, you should anyway. It's for the better for them, and they might not thank you for it right away, but someday they will. The same theory should be applied to secrets in the media.
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