All the President's Men

All the President’s Men was a very powerful movie that really dug deep into the Watergate scandal which led to Nixon’s resignation. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford played the role of two reporters working for the Washington Post. They were investigating the Watergate break-in and made some surprising discoveries. However, in order to make these discoveries and write their story, they had to make a lot of ethical judgments. Many things they did throughout the movie were very sketchy and unethical. But did the end justify the means?

The reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, did some sketchy activities in order to get the truth. One thing that is against the code of ethics is using unknown sources. They used many anonymous sources throughout their investigation including a source named “Deep Throat.” Reporter Bob Woodward would meet “Deep Throat” in dark parking garages which made the information seem even more sketchy, but that doesn’t mean that the information wasn’t true. In many cases though, it was important to keep these sources confidential because they were dealing with a huge national issue and the sources could be in danger if their names got out. But how are readers supposed to trust any of the stories if the sources were not named? The reporters had to deal with this and find other ways to get information from credible sources whose names they could reveal. The ways they went about finding people who were involved dealt with ethical dilemmas as well. The reporters were able to get a list of names and addresses of people that were involved by using one of their coworkers who was guilt tripped into doing it. Once they got the list, they tried to track everyone down. When the people wouldn’t talk to them or let them in, the reporters became very intrusive and sort of tricked the people into talking. Reporter Carl Bernstein came into a woman’s home and tried to get information from her by tricking her into questions. He was also very sneaky too by writing on napkins to remember all the information. He wrote down things she said without her even knowing about it. Now this kind of intrusiveness seems very unethical but it was the only way to get information because every witness was too scared to talk.

The reporters managed to get more information from one of the sources by tricking her again in order to learn someone’s name and verify what they knew. They wanted to know if P stood for the name Porter. They knew that she wouldn’t verify that information so they pretended that they already knew it and said it in front of her to see if she would correct them or deny it. When she didn’t deny the information, they knew that it was correct. They tricked her into verifying their information.

The reporters did many unethical activities in order to learn the truth. Is it wrong that they deceived people into getting information even though it was for the greater good? I definitely think that the end justified the means and the only way to find out the truth was to do sketchy activities. I do not think that it is right to deceive people but sometimes that it what you have to do in order to get the truth. The truth affected the entire nation and the American people deserved to know what happened with the Watergate scandal. People deserve to know the truth so the ends do justify the means.

Product Placements and Internet Advertisments

One thing that I never really thought of was product placement and why it is considered an ethical issue. I really do not think that audiences are manipulated by the advertisements. One movie that really uses a lot of product placement is Back to the Future. It showed the Pepsi product over and over along with many other products. It had no effect on me whatsoever. It did not make me want to buy Pepsi. I think that product placement in movies actually makes the movie seem more realistic because they use products that real people use every day.

Another concern is that product placement takes away from the film’s narrative. I think that in some instances, this might be true but overall I think that it adds to the movie. In Talladega Nights, they strongly stressed each product and it definitely added to the movie because the products were shown in a way to make the movie funnier. It was a great advertisement for the product and it did not take anything away from the movie.

Although product placement in movies doesn’t bother me, I hate internet advertisements. The internet definitely bombards you with advertisements on every Web page. Cyberspace advertisements really bother me especially the ones that flash and pop up saying that you’re the 999,999 viewer and you win a free T.V. They are very intrusive. One thing that we discussed in class was the advertisements on Facebook. I think that it is very creepy that the advertisements are designed to my interests. I see advertisements about my school and about Greek items that I can buy. I don’t understand how they got that information about me. It also showed an advertisement for my sorority once and I have no idea how Facebook knew what sorority I was in since I don’t mention it in my profile.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest arise in the media all the time and it is important to understand them in order to make ethical decisions. Conflicts of interest deal with conflicting relationships, conflicting public participation, and vested interests and hidden agendas (p.213). As journalists, you should not incorporate your personal life with work. If I were a journalist and I wanted to do a story about sororities and greek life, it would be unethical if I talked about my own experiences and only interviewed girls from my sorority. To be completely fair, I should interview girls from all the other chapters and not my own. But it would be best if I didn’t even do the story at all and someone else who wasn’t greek should cover it. My mom has to deal with conflicts of interest every day since she works for the government. For example, we cannot have any kind of political signs in our yard because she is not allowed to display her political views. All jobs deal with conflicts of interest especially public relations. The book had a good example of conflicting interests if a public relations firm represented an oil company and an environmental group. That just wouldn’t be ethical.

One major conflict of interest is checkbook journalism. Usually it can be unethical, but sometimes it is necessary to get your story. I have never really agreed with paying a source, but when dealing with media competition, it is sometimes necessary. Many major news sources have used checkbook journalism including the New York Times. The Times paid $1,000 in 1912 for an interview with the wireless operator of the Titanic. I believe that if journalists need to use checkbook journalism to get a great story, they should inform the public that they paid their source. That way the public can decide if the information is accurate or not. It would be very unethical if the public was not aware of checkbook journalism and the source would lose a lot of their credibility. An incident of checkbook journalism was used by ABC after the Columbine shootings. ABC paid $16,000 to a friend of one of the gunman in order to obtain home videos and other details about the shooters. Even if checkbook journalism was the only way to get that information, ABC should have told the public that the information was paid for. I think that it is deceiving to not let the public know where the information came from and that a price was paid in order to get it. Situations like that can really damage the credibility of a network like ABC.