Jay Rosen's post on "The Abyss of Observation Alone" continues to draw moral discussion at PressThink. Jay tells the story of a journalist who accompanies a Bosnian sniper and gets more involved in the sniper's evil business than he ever imagined he would.
Jay's question is: "Where would the reasoning come from for the journalist who decides that he should not go into the hills above Sarajevo to observe?"
Since the journalist's dilemma is a moral one, the obvious answer is that the reasoning would come from a moral system of some kind.
The question then is, does journalism provide that moral system?
In 28 years as a journalist, the only system I ever learned for arriving at moral answers in the newsroom was "if it's legal, we can do it."
In other words, in newsrooms the law itself is used as the definitive moral system.
So is the law a good enough moral system for journalists? Or does journalism need something more -- a more complete, a deeper, moral code incorporated into the profession?
Medicine has such a code,the Hippocratic Oath, which includes not only "Do no harm" but also "Give no deadly medicine to any one if asked," "Give no medicine to induce abortion," and "With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art."
How come journalists don't have a moral system that picks up where the law falls off? Do we use the law merely as a moral crutch?
How about the Golden Rule? If the journalist was one of those people in the alley, would he want a journalist up in a belfry to observe him through the riflescope of a sniper, and then to stand by passively as the sniper squeezed off two shots?
How about the Ten Commandments as a moral code?
How about the Dhammapada?
How about our own Stephen Waters' "Simple Wisdom?"
How about Marcus Aurelius?
How about secular humanism?
How about the Talmud? ;-)
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