Around this time of year, we tend to cover ethics in a few of my classes. Granted, we talk about the importance of ethics all year in various ways, but this is when we hunker down and say, “OK. Let’s really dig into this.”
One assignment I’d given for years involved a scenario in which you are a reporter at your college newspaper and you get leaked some documents about an arrest earlier in the year. The football team’s star running back was picked up for driving under the influence and a search of the car found illegal marijuana (I’ve been doing this for so long now, I have to qualify that this weed is illegal…).
You know the documents are legit, so you go through the process of calling sources. The player pleads with you, the coach threatens you and basically you have a story if you want one. The editor leaves it up to you.
The variety of answers of what they would do always amazes me. The one thing at least one student tries to do is “split the baby,” even though it’s stated this can’t be done: You either run it or you don’t in what is the last publication before winter break. They always seem to think there’s a way to finesse the situation so they don’t have to make a hard choice.
Others make a stand that says the people have the right to know, while even more sympathize with the athlete, seeing themselves as college students with potentially problematic pasts that run parallel to this kid. The one answer that always bothers me is the decision not to run it because “It might hurt our football program.” They essentially see themselves as part of the “football tribe” more than the “journalist tribe” in all of this.
Still, it’s fun watching them come to grips with various ways of seeing a situation when it’s more about “should or shouldn’t” than “can or can’t.” To that end, here’s a throwback post that outlines an ethics assignment that turned out even better than the one noted above, although I don’t know if you can replicate it.
Enjoy.
The Accidentally Awesome Ethics Assignment
Trying to make ethics real to students isn’t always easy. Fictional scenarios only go so far, as students can be unrealistically brave (“I’d tell my editor to kiss my grits and I’d quit!”) or fall into “Lebowski mode.”
In my freelance class, we talked about the various elements of ethics (honesty, integrity etc.) as well as some of the crucial aspects of what makes life a little different for freelancers (You only eat what you kill. You might have differing standards for different editors. etc.)
That said, I think I accidentally bumped into one of the more engaging assignments of the entire class. Here’s the story:
I have no attendance policy for the freelancing class, other than to say, “If you skip class, you’re losing out on whatever important thing we’re doing that day.” I figure, hell, they’re paying for the class through their tuition. If they want to treat my class like that Planet Fitness membership they haven’t cancelled over the past six years, despite never actually going to Planet Fitness, well, fine by me.
Only half of the students dragged themselves to the 8 a.m. class in the bitter cold on the day we had the ethics lecture. After we mulled the ethics of ethics and so forth, I asked them to consider the following:
“How would you feel ethically if I decided to just give you 100 percent on the third (final) story you have for this class because you showed up today?” In other words, I waive the assignment, you get the points. It’s like you showed up and you got a free cookie for doing so.
It was like pulling teeth to get them to discuss it at first. Some were happy to take it, others said, “Well, I’d feel a little guilty, but…” Eventually, they kind of settled in with the, “Gee, I don’t know but it sounds nice in theory” outcome.
So, I told them, “I’m going to leave the room. You have 15 minutes to come to a conclusion on if this should happen or not for real. If you don’t all agree, nothing happens. If you all agree on getting the freebie, it will happen. Go for it.”
As I sat in my office, I could hear the arguing, the overlapping voices and the frequent of yelling of “YEAH, BUT, WAIT…” After the 15 minutes, the appointed spokesperson of the group tossed open the door and yelled, “UNNNNGGHHH! FILAK! WE’RE READY!”
They explained that they were going to take the freebie and why they thought it was OK. Some justified it as they were always there and other people tended to skip a lot. (“One of the people not here just Snapchatted me a picture of themself in bed, so I don’t feel bad at all about this…” one student noted.)
Some said they figure life is a lot of luck of the draw, so they just got the lucky draw. Others said the benefit didn’t technically hurt anyone, as it wasn’t like the people who DIDN’T get the free pass had to do MORE than they would have otherwise.
I then said that they had really touched on all the areas except for one that seemed a little obvious. I asked a student if she had covered a vintage clothing event she was paid to do as a freelancer. When she said she did, I asked, “So, what if, after you published this piece, the person who organized the event came up to you and thanked you for such a nice story and gave you a $100 gift certificate to her vintage clothing store? Is that OK? I mean, you’re getting a benefit for something you would have done anyway, right?”
The student just stared at me. The young lady next to her said, “I think I want to change my vote.”
Then one kid asked me, “Is this real? I mean… some of us weren’t really sure that you meant it.”
“No,” I said. “This is real. You get the freebie.”
“My stomach kind of hurts,” another kid said. “This just feels weird now.”
I dismissed the class and they kept talking about it as they walked down the hall, some arguing while others trying to reassure themselves this was fine.
I hadn’t planned this at all, nor did I really think of how it would pan out, but here are a couple things this exercise ended up emphasizing:
REAL LIFE ETHICS ARE HARD: In life, there are a number of decisions I’ve made that I look back on and think, “What if I’d gone the other way?” Almost all of them are ones in which ethics are deeply ingrained.
I’ve never been a fan of debating ethics in a classroom setting because it feels like a false front to me. It’s the same reason I have trouble teaching crime reporting in a classroom: I could do a fake press conference about a fatal accident or have kids “role play” a terrible scenario, but in the end, it’s not real. While ethical debates give the students some things to consider, the impact isn’t there.
The thing that made this situation hard for them was that there were real consequences. They got something for free, which they likely felt they didn’t earn. It was an all-or-nothing situation, which I have found many students don’t like, as they prefer to hedge their bets as opposed to putting it all on 23 Red and spinning the wheel. It was something they really wanted, but they also felt guilty about their good fortune when compared to that of their missing colleagues. Which leads to point two…
GUILT IS A BITCH: One of my favorite discussions ever happened during the weekend I got married. My best man, Adam, came from a traditional Jewish family, while I and the rest of my kin were mostly in the Catholic realm. During the downtime before the wedding, Adam sidled up to me and said, “You’re on to something about Catholic guilt.”
Over the years, we’d had these great debates over whose faith had the bigger slice of the guilt pie. He argued that the stereotypical “Jewish mother” guilt was both real and unrelenting when it came from people within one’s family, while I argued that the less-direct Catholic guilt was like the smell generated from one of those plug-in oil things: It is everywhere and it just hangs there all around you.
In the end, we kind of came to the agreement that this was like arguing Hank Aaron vs. Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle vs. Joe DiMaggio: It all depends on how you slice the argument, but both are more than worthy of greatness. Guilt, be it Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt or other similar guilt is really a pain.
The situation in class drove that home for me. These kids were literally getting stomach aches and headaches as they tried to wrap their brains around the idea of what was being offered and if they should take it. The emotion most of them came back to was one of guilt.
I’m not saying that’s good or bad, although guilt has led me to both good and mediocre decisions in life, but to have so many people from so many different backgrounds have their mental state coalesce around one emotion really says something.
THERE IS NO GOOD DECISION: One of the things I tell students a lot is that if you end up dealing with an ethical dilemma and you feel perfect at the end of your decision-making process, you really didn’t have an ethical dilemma. Dealing with these kinds of things in journalism is a lot like this scene from “Argo:”
There can be situations where you feel better or worse about the choices and the outcomes, but at the end of the day, you really don’t get to feel like everything is perfect. The key is to learn from each situation and make better bad decisions as you move forward.
