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Ethics in Media Editing

Becoming a media editor had always been a dream job for me where it has come to my mind
because I like how people work in media behind the scenes and especially those who pick up
carefully what information to be included, what to be excluded and what to be edited but this
involves many things in considerations like facts and truth that should be delivered to the
audience which makes it hard for being an editor for many reasons like having job safety in one
side and credibility in the other side which put the whole job under an ethical dilemma. The
main role of media is broadcasting the news and publishing it as it is if it is directly sourced from
the media channel but if the media is depending on another source then it has a big
responsibility to confirm the credibility of the source. Sometimes some media channels
broadcast news in different way and though they know the truth but they tend to change it in
sometime because the ideology of the person whom news is about is different from the
ideology of the media mean. If that news are in favor of the person it is about and the media
has different ideology then they tend to make it appear as not real or not confirmed and in case
it is not good news but the person is ideologically in harmony with the media then they do their
best to make it appear as not real.
Generally such things happen in media where ethics are no longer involved in editing the news
and confirming their credibility. The world has become a global village where the concepts that
regulated the humanitarian relationships became suspicious and all concepts are changing
according to certain political beliefs and apart from reality. Media broadcast hundred of news
everyday and people listen and see different stories. All concepts are changing but the concept
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of ethics in editing is changing in a dramatic way. In these days we see what happens in Syria
for example; if we listen to the Syrian Official Media we see that the government is the victim
and if we see other media we see that the government is the gladiator. In both cases there is no
ethics because the real victim which is the Syrian people is not considered in both supporting
and opposing media.
It is very important when getting certain news to edit it in the proper way where first we have
to understand it and look at the reasons behind it then to see its quality and its relativity to the
person or event it is about and its limit of danger and then to whom we have to broadcast the
news and how to deal with it in the proper way. Editing the news is a big responsibility because
it involves credibility and since media play an important role in developing or devastating
societies then they have to be aware about their role and to be honest with their readers and
spectators and be responsible before the public utilization of their role.
Ethics in editing should be a must in every mean of media but unfortunately this cannot be
done for many reasons. The first reason is the political orientation of media where a media
supported by a certain politician will never publish anything bad about him even if they are sure
about the credibility of information and are aware about its dangers but on the contrary they
tend to defend that person and they even change the whole news in order to make it appear in
favor for their financer. The second reason is that editors who work in certain media are not
independent and they follow the desires of the media owner and work according to his desire
and their priority is maintaining their jobs apart from their credibility and honesty. The third
reason is that there is a known fact in media that good news doesnt sell but bad news sells a
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lot so whenever there is a bad news about certain person then they consider it a media feature
and hurry up in publishing it without checking its credibility in order to sell more.
Ethics in editing is something hard to achieve because every media has its own financers and its
advertisers so it has to be in political harmony with them and things are mostly the same with
media specialized art and music but when talking about other media like sport media then the
news are mostly ethical because rumors are very rare and the framework of the news is the
results that are clear and the same and cannot be changed.
There is a big gossip about ethics in editing and this subject has been controversial for many
years and biggest truth in media that they use ethics in editing it is that the media channels
cannot survive with being totally true because they believe if they do so they will be against
everyone so they prefer to be with someone in this case. It is not always the mistake of the
reporter who broadcast the events and the information like they are but when it reaches the
auditors they shape these news according to their ideologies and many reporters know that this
will happen but the problem in media is that the main concern of the channels is to get
advertisements and the main concern of the reporters to get their salaries and because of this
they leave story to be published to be shaped by the editor who shapes it in the way that his
financer like it to be. For example there is a well known Lebanese newspaper that changed its
total political believes because the political figure that finances it shifted his political believes
from one side to another. The war here is not between ethics and reports but it is between
ethics and money where when there is money there is no ethics and this is a fact that no one
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can deny and it remain like this as long as businessmen and politicians are controlling the
media.
References
- Bruneau W. and Turk J.L. (Eds) (2004), Disciplining dissent The curbing of free
expression in academia and the media, James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Toronto,
Ontario, Canada.
- Keeble, R. (2001), Ethics for journalists, Routledge, London, UK.
- Williams F. (1957), Dangerous Estate The Anatomy of Newspapers, Longmans, Green
and Co., London, UK.