Three lessons in unethical media behavior

I teach the required ethics course at Columbia Journalism School, and I normally spend a lot of time telling my graduate students that there’s quite a bit of gray area in this topic. Often, clear answers aren’t obvious.

Some things are obvious. We know not to lie or plagiarize or fabricate, of course, but what about the murkier issues? To name a few:

How should news organizations decide whether to publish hacked information?

If a source is vulnerable — for example, an undocumented immigrant — to what extent do reporters need to protect them even if they agree to be on the record?

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