According to okuna in 1995, Ethical problems arises in the journalist's manner and method of doing his or her duties. He went further to disclose that these newspaper agency can ruin lives and also make celebrities. Below I would be sharing with you some of the ways they can be affecting lives negatively.
Sycophancy
Character assassination
Pressure
Confidentiality of sources
Invasion of of privacy
Inaccuracy. Etc
SYCOPHANCY - This is a situation whereby a medium continuously praises a particular person despite the person's ills or incompetence. This is common where such media are owned by individuals who derive some particular form of favour from such individual or government agency. We can derive example from the Abucha Era. It was a common phenomenon to read on newspapers of his achievements whereas he never did anything on ground.
Sycophancy in journalism is unethical as it deprive the society of genuine reports. Their motive is to win favour.
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION - This is the act of portraying someone in a false light either by calling him or her names which do not suit his pedigree or by names to ridicule him. Sometimes the accused can sue for mane damages but at the long run, the damage has been done. This kind of ethical mess is found during election campaign.
PRESSURE - It should be noted that journalist performing their duties do face pressure from both outside and inside his profession. Within his work place, his boss might force him to do some certain things that are unethical to his profession. Outside, his close friends and relatives can force him to do some other stuff outside his profession.
CONFIDENTIALITY OF SOURCE - According to the rules and code guiding the journalist profession, a journalist is not suppose to reveal a the source of his information to anyone except it concerns national security. But sometimes our journalist go way out of line to disclose the sourced of their information.
INVASION OF PRIVACY - Though the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria has protection of individual code. But journalist still engage in the invasion of individual privacy even when information are not in the interest of the entire public. This is what is stipulated in the NUI code of journalism practice. " Journalists should respect the privacy of individuals and their families at all cost unless it affects public interest".
Even most programes on our TVs, Radios, newspapers feature invasion of privacy. What a shame.
INACCURACY - This is the haphazard report of news and stories which has the tendency of misleading the public. Well this has the tendency of reducing readership and credibility of the medium. Such issues and problems arises from the fact that most journalist do not verify their reports or information available to them before publishing it.
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