This is my final blog post about media ethics for credit, but I'll be uploading more things as the media sheds light on some of it's biggest issues! To sum up the story that we had to read and what happened, take a look at the link, Megan Meier Suicide. This story got national attention, but it came from your small, hometown newspaper. A newspaper where Steve Pokin, wrote an article where he had not named the accused. He waited to write the article until after charges would have been filed. In the article we read, it specifically talks about how a judgement call was made on behalf of Pokin. Was it the right judgement call?
In my opinion, Pokin made the right decision. In stories like this, most people would rather not remember who did it but who was the victim of it. Can you remember the name of the gunman who was at Sandy Hook Elementary School or do you remember more names of the victims who were taken away from their families? If I had to choose a side, I would have sided with Pokin. Just like I believe Bok and his Valuation Hedonism would have. Bok's Hedonism wants to give the most pleasure or least pain. Does Pokin try to give the most pleasure or least pain to the victim, accused, and the community by not naming the accused? I think he does, but it easily backfired on him. After Pokin decided not to name the accused, extreme backlash occurred. Pokin started to become a victim of cyber bullying himself. Isn't the purpose of media supposed to be bringing light onto these stories and trying to prevent them from happening again? Wouldn't people not want to do exactly what this story is trying to stop? Did trying to protect those that are innocent until proven guilty work?
On the flip side though, a bigger paper immediately named the neighbors. The story in the St. Louis Post gave the names of the neighbors & others involved. Was that ethical? In choosing an ethical perspective for this side of the story, I would have to go with Communitarism. Obviously, as even stated in the article, a professor even stated that the outcry of the public could be "attributed to a social need to curb outrageous behavior when controls like prosecution don't seem to work". Communitarism is just that, putting the communities needs first before individual needs. Also on this side of the story though, was putting the names out there the right thing to do? In cases like these, you want the people who committed such an act to face the humiliation and rejection that comes with the act they committed. So was the Post ethical? Absolutely.
I think the most compelling side of this story has to be Pokin's. Pokin made a judgement call, one in which he thought was right. I would love to have gotten in the mindset of his to figure out how he came to the decision not to name the accused perpetrators. When people commit these horrible acts of rage, anger, or sadness, we are always left with the question of why? and in all honesty, we never really get to find out. Take Sandy Hook Elementary School for example. Many people, including myself, have wondered why would someone go to an elementary school and shoot children and teachers? There are so many questions left up in the air, especially the big one of WHY. However, in situations like that though, most perpetrators usually kill themselves in the end, because they don't want to face the consequences. In an odd way, I feel like Pokin was trying to prove a point with his thought process on not naming the neighbors. I'm wondering if Pokin wanted to see what kind of reaction he would get for not naming them versus if he did name them? If Pokin was trying to prove that when people don't get all the information that they want, they become nasty and demand it, I think it was well proven.
Another alternative to this story would have been Aristotle's Golden Mean. Aristotle's Golden Mean would have been helpful in the fact of choosing the middle option instead of not naming the accused or full on naming the accused. Would Aristotle have said to just name the ages and gender? Would Aristotle have said to give an area of an address? I think that would have been better then just putting it all out there. In Aristotle's case, he would have picked the middle of two extremes. One extreme being naming them and the other extreme being not naming them at all. Was justice served to either extreme? I don't think so.
