Jon's Newswriting

Journalist are the guards of the forth estate. They are not the leaders of the church, the state, of of the aristocracy, but rather the voice of the people that give a fair and balnce view and report on the other three estates. With so much responsabilty journalist have to be very ethical with their reporting and report fairly and ethicaly and be sure not offend anyone. So the question of when to report on sensitive issues is touchy ground. The historic reporting of the Zodiac Killings is a good example of when it is ethical to report information to the general public. The said killer would mock the press by sending complicated cryptic messages to the paper who would in turn publish them. Some would say that this fed the ego of an insane killer by doing so. The above may be true but by publishing the messages put more eyes on the text, and someone may have known a person who was into such cryptic puzzles and lead to an arrest. In the example where a case could be solved by the aid of the public it is perfectly ethical. While some news outlets are out for ratings and the revenue of the competition of media release information just for the fact of having that exclusive. The best example would be in recent times is the tape that NBC released of the Virginia Tech killers rant. The release of the tape would have done nothing to solve the murders since the killer in turn killed himself in the end. Therefore NBC's only motive would have been that ratings and profit. Lastly the later release of sensitive material has proved to be affective. In Baltimore this past fall a former City Council person was murdered outside of a local bar. Several days after the murder local news and police outlets released a video of the accused murders. While it took sometime all three have since been arrested and charged due in part to the video, a person from the public may have recognised the mannerisms of the killers or even passed as they too passed. So the only times that information should be aired out is when it will have a better chance to solve a crime and when the time has past on a sensitive case as not to offend anyone and not just looking at ratings or a boost in newspaper sales.