“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

When it comes to Sony’s “The Interview” (last years crazy controversial film), the decision to produce a film with the plotted execution of a dictatorial leader in a country that already has less than great relations with the United States, and then to present this film as a comedy on top of that, obviously poses some ethically based questions. But, we aren’t going to focus on how ethically questionable the film it self was, because well, that would take many days, and many post and lots of coffee. Instead, I want to delve in to the way Sony handled the situation of releasing/not releasing/dealing with threats conundrum.

 Ultimately, Sony ended up delaying the release of the film due to threats received by a hacker group (known as The Guardians) who threatened to expose emails, personal information and, oh yeah, blow up theaters which decided to play the film. So, did Sony do the right thing in delaying release of the movie? On the surface, yes of course, when threatened by acts of homicide wouldn’t you stop your initial plans? But, if we flip how we look at this, we can argue that Sony deciding to not show the film when they intended, due to the threats received, this looks like a pretty acceptable case of freedom of speech being thrown out the window because someone doesn’t agree with what we have to say, now that doesn’t seem acceptable, does it? Viewing the situation from that lens, was it ethically sound for Sony to cancel "The Interview"? I’d have to say that given our society’s implementation and support of upholding an American’s freedom of speech under our first amendment this was a not so sound decision because Sony forfeited their rights due to an external opinion. Now, this is just one way to look at it, of course there are many things to be considered within this situation, so perhaps it’s safe to go with a pluralistic view. There are competing values present in the situation of “The Interview”; such as, North Korea's anger (rightfully so) at the film for how degrading it is towards their country, and the fact that the U.S. felt it was okay to produce a film that depicted the murder of another country’s leader. And of course, we have America’s view that we have a right to present our thoughts and speech in a multitude of ways, despite popular agreement or not, kind of like a “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (Evelyn Beatrice Hall) attitude.  
When it comes to free speech you wouldn’t expect there to necessarily be an ethical component attached to it, because freedom of speech is supposed to allow individuals to relay their opinions, and thoughts without judgement and censorship but, I guess in some cases there can be ethical attachments depending on how enormous the audience the person/organization is relaying the message to.  Let’s look at Sony’s decision to create a film of this nature in terms of Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance.  This ethical perspective “asks decision makers to examine the situation objectively from all points of view”, now, it appears that Sony did consider this task, and still made the decision to create and had intentions of showing the film, they just chose to disregard the opinions of those who were against this film being made.  But again, in American culture we uphold the right to speak freely, meaning we present our thoughts and opinion in various mediums free of being restricted by unpopular opinion.

In an Op-Ed piece by Aaron Sorkin in The New York Times he brought forth probably one of the most overlooked realities of the hack on Sony systems in the midst of “The Interview” being released, Sorkin stated, “The Guardians just had to lob the ball; they knew our media would crash the boards and slam it in. First, salaries were published. Not by the hackers, but by American news outlets.” The American public would have known nothing of this hack into Sony systems if the American reporters hadn’t dug up and printed the hacked information themselves onto their news outlets. The ethical component attached to this reality was that these news outlets, decided that damaging information was “newsworthy” and needed to be printing, knowing that they would be the ones providing the information to place other in harm. Clearly ignoring Mills Utility Principle, which is to focus on the outcome; the journalist who decided to run with their new found information did not think about the danger in releasing information such as social security numbers, addresses or other personal information. Our journalist seem to have disregarded most ethical standards and will publish what sells for their paycheck. And what exactly is “newsworthy” about potentially putting individuals lives at risk, tell me more about how this is informative to the masses. We were supposed to be worried about hackers spreading the information around and potentially harming us, but instead we took it into our own hands and shared the information first, because newsworthy in our society seems to have a different meaning then it once had.

“Wouldn’t it be a movie moment if the other studios invoked the NATO rule and denounced the attack on Sony as an attack on all of us, and our bedrock belief in free expression?”, stated Sorkin. It would have been quite the site to see if something like this happened, instead of our journalist running to be active members on the destructive side of the net. When it comes down to the most ethical concerns, it looks like the most attention should be directed to our internal priorities and not so much what others are doing.

Let's Get Ethical

Our lovely land of the inter webs are a breeding ground for ethical problems to manifest.  Not being tied down to the same laws and protocols as most other forms of media relations (print, radio, television), the digital world allows for the uncensored, ill-advised and devious tongue (or fingers) to get away with some of the most unethical behaviors that would otherwise not fly in our alternate media world.  Since I intend to have a career heavily based within the digital world, I fear that I will encounter multiple ethical scenarios.  I mean, we all know Twitter and Instagram can only stay righteous but for so long.  Living in an age fueled with “leaks” and a gossip hungry society, the realm of ethical problems to be faced is endless.

If we look back, there are a plethora of ethically questionable media stunts. For example: our beloved Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and the beautiful Gabrielle Union had their "goods" shared with the public without their consent due to hackers.  That’s just one type of unethical behavior in our digital media. If we look at broadcast media or print we run into some other issues with ethics, such as whether or not a journalist is being objective or bias in their coverage of an event. 

Fox News…who seems to clash with the understanding of ethics in the media ALOT, has been confronted on many occasions due to their seemingly lack of comprehension of the term ethics.  Fox Business News host, Charles Payne used a certain photo (which he assumed was from the protest) as the image for his discussion on the #blackbrunch protestors. Little did he know (probably because fact checking, research, and maybe even clearance from a supervisor, is something abnormal for Fox News) the photo he used was actually an incredibly old photo, turned racist meme, and not in any way related to the topic he was discussing. Although he never took responsibility or apologized for the mishap, he did mention in a tweet (following his bashing of the image in his understanding of it to be from the protest) that the photo was indeed real, but not from the protest (Read More). Humble much Fox?  Then there's the catalog of well-known satire and yellow-journalistic publications that are available for your entertainment; the media is not a perfect entity, there are many ways it falls short in remaining an honest form of communication, yet so does everything, unless you’re some omnipotent being, which is why you have to be exceedingly cautious when you enter a field heavily involved in media relations. 

As I begin to delve into my media centered career path, I like to think that I am pretty aware of ethical and unethical procedures when it comes to communicating to the masses.  I am currently interning with a national not-profit organization where I maintain their social media platforms.  I ALWAYS….I repeat ALWAYS, check with my supervisor before posting information to make sure it’s accurate, relative, and true.  If you can’t back it up with hard evidence then you shouldn’t be posting it, tweeting it, publishing it.  If you have beef with a competitor organization, you don’t bash them through the media, that’s  childish.  Keep your brand classy and polished, no need to make under the table deals with politicians or stalk your page visitors with cookies. We’re better than that, agreed?

There have been a couple of tools that have helped me build a substantive ethical decision making toolkit.  Having been raised by a journalist probably helped immensely. My conscious is another huge one. I feel awful after accidentally stepping on a worm after a rain storm; so I couldn’t possibly do

something I know is morally and ethically tainted.  I’ve also had the benefit of engaging in a coupe of text that have helped me shape my ethical toolkit such as  “I Know Who You Are And I Saw What You Did” by Lori Andrews, which essentially unveils the stalker-like reality of social media sites and how they track your info in order to sell to you on behalf of ad agencies.  “The Terror Dream” by Susan Faludi gave great insight into the many facets of broadcast and print media during the time of tragedy; which helped me gain awareness into how wording and inflated descriptions can play a huge part in story-telling.

Being that this blog is an extension of my media ethics course, as a student, I am obligated to have many questions, which I naturally do anyway.  One of my biggest questions is when it comes to the internet, our digital media seems to not have many boundaries; in a realm when anyone can be a journalist (authorized or not) and where internet leaks, and digital stalking is a new norm, when looking for information, how do we go about it in the truest of forms?  I’d love to see how some of the most scandalous issues in media history were handled, and I’d love a discussion on ethical issues exclusively in the digital world. I feel like there’s a melting pot of unbelievable awfulness to be explored.