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ETHICS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM MODULE
FIRST DO NO HARM:
DEVELOPING ETHICAL APPROACHES TO REPORTING
FOREIGN NEWS
INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDELINES FOR ROLE-PLAYING
EXERCISE IN JOUR312I (GLOBAL NEWS MEDIA)
PREPARED BY
CHRISTOPHER D. KARADJOV
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION
MAY 2012
Scope and Purpose
This module is designed to prepare students in JOUR312I (Global News Media) to exercise
critical thinking skills in situations modeled on reporting on news events abroad for U.S.-based
mass media. The goal is to require students to make ethically based decisions in complex settings
arising from the necessity to operate in foreign locations. Students who play “reporters” and
“sources” are forced to think through a range of possible interactions and create outcomes that are
based on widely acceptable ethical rules. The exercise necessitates that students in JOUR312I learn
about an ongoing news story in a foreign location; then they have to put themselves in the shoes of
actors in the corresponding situation; finally, a debriefing led by the instructor allows students to
conceptualize and understand the possible ethical decisions they might have to make under such
conditions. Particular attention will be paid to the use of visuals in view of the ubiquitous
multimedia assets available to reporters and “citizen journalists” nowadays.
Intended Course and Need
Global News Media (JOUR312I) is a mainstay class and capstone in the Department of
Journalism and Mass Communication’s curriculum; it is also a general education and
interdisciplinary class. The department currently offers two or three sections every semester, with
40 students in each section. Typically, about 30-40% of those are not journalism majors; often,
students are coming from various colleges on our campus.
This important class, which introduces students to foreign correspondence, news flows and
media globalization, currently has one major deficiency: it does not address systematically ethics in
reporting from abroad. That is, all ethical issues in the journalism curriculum – per existing
textbooks and other course materials – are confined to either U.S.-based case studies, or involve
topics limited to censorship and freedom of the press around the world. As important as those are,
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students cannot acquire much understanding of the potential ethical pitfalls and problems they
might encounter if they were to report for U.S. media from overseas. Even an obvious ethical
challenge such as the wide use of embedded reporters during the recent war in Iraq has been only
addressed in passing in JOUR312I.
Therefore, this module fulfills a long-standing need in the journalism department curriculum. In
a safe classroom environment, students are put into the shoes of foreign reporters covering events
from culturally, ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse locations. Under the guidance of
an instructor, students work on scenarios that require them to make judgments that involve ethical
issues. At the minimum, students will have to think about potential ethical pitfalls in the process of
such reporting and try to solve ethical conundrums as they appear. The module is not an end into
itself, but rather an attempt to re-focus the attention of students from U.S.-based mentality toward
more universally applicable standards of conduct.
Possible Scenarios
The underlying idea of this exercise is to assign students in the class roles as either “reporters”
(usually, up to three students at a time) or “sources” – that is, foreign nationals (or, in some cases,
Americans abroad such as soldiers or diplomats), who are being interviewed about certain
newsworthy situations. Because of the large size of the class (usually around 40 students), only a
fraction of those in attendance can be assigned roles and participate in the exercise, while the rest
play the role of “observers.” Another possible option is to ask the entire class to be used as
“sources” and only have two-three “reporters” asking questions on the spot. Such details will be
left to the instructor’s discretion; they will also depend on the particular news story being reenacted in the classroom. Students, however, will not know in advance who may play the role of
reporters/sources. Everyone in the classroom will be required to prepare in advance by studying
materials for the news story and preparing draft questions. The use of video sources (nowadays
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widely available on YouTube) is strongly encouraged. As a matter of pedagogical control, the
instructor may administer a short quiz about the assigned topic/issue/event and thus motivate
students to complete the assigned readings and familiarize themselves with other necessary
materials. The success of the exercise largely depends on the degree of preparation that students
will have; therefore, such control is highly advisable.
The roleplaying format of this exercise allows for unlimited malleability as far as the specific
scenarios are concerned. To help instructors with the selection of possible situations, below is a
non-exhaustive list of options that could be used in their specific sections of JOUR312I. Students
may find themselves:
a) Covering military action/conflict, such as the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the conflict in
Syria. This scenario encompasses issues such as embedding, relations with the troops, need for
maintaining operational safety/secrecy vs. informing your audience, ethical decisions regarding
reporting on dead and wounded combatants;
b) Reporting on acts of terrorism abroad, such as London subway bombings of 2005, Mumbai
hotel siege of 2008, and similar events. In this case, some of the major issues will be
concerning ethical treatment of victims and witnesses. The general guidelines are the same as
in covering a crime scene in the United States, with the added components regarding local
sensitivities;
c) Covering a disaster abroad, such as the Haiti earthquake of 2010. A major issue is the
respectful treatment of victims and other sources, while soliciting information for the news
story. In some instances, “reporters” may be asked to pay sources and therefore the students
will have to make a decision about the ethics of such actions;
d) Covering protests abroad, such as a demonstration in front of a U.S. diplomatic mission in a
foreign country or political gatherings decrying local regimes, such as a demonstration against
the authorities in Egypt (Tahrir Square). A principal issue will be how to maintain impartiality,
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especially if the “reporters” are identified by the interviewed sources (i.e., people in the crowd)
as Americans;
e) Reporting on daily routines of people in a foreign country. This scenario does not necessarily
involve the danger or confrontation of crisis reporting scenarios above. Two main issues that
must be addressed here regard maintaining multicultural sensitivity and appropriate treatment
of sources.
f) Any combination of the scenarios above. Examples of possible situations abound in the current
news, which may be used by instructors creatively.
No exhaustive list can be prepared since current events cannot be predicted. Developing
news will offer many opportunities to instructors for creating appropriate scenarios. It is
advisable that JOUR312I instructors coordinate such scenarios across different sections
primarily for the purpose of generating creative ideas. Otherwise, the discretion about which
current events to use and how to appropriate them for the purpose of this exercise should be left
to respective JOUR312I instructors.
Also, particular emphasis will be made on the use of visuals and other multimedia
assets. Ethical questions that concern image-taking abroad, for instance, are not always
identical to those in the United States. Some cultures are averse to photography; conversely,
some cultures are much more at ease with taking and displaying images that would be
considered offensive (or at least in poor taste) in the United States. Students must learn as much
as possible about such local peculiarities. During debriefing, these issues will be discussed at
length.
Each scenario should take about 20-30 minutes, and 20-30 minutes will be devoted to
discussion (debriefing of participants). Thus, within the module students will have the
opportunity to practice (or observe) three different scenarios, which will give them enough
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material to sensitize them to the pitfalls of ethics decision making in foreign correspondence.
No scenario in itself can foresee all possible developments, just as no two practical situations
will be exactly the same. Instead, this module pushes journalism students outside of their
comfort zone and requires them to develop the critical thinking skills that will prove essential
in the field.
Overall, students will use available literature and guidance from the professor to work
on such role-playing; they should practice to make ethical decisions related both to the
coverage (that is, what to include in their stories) and to their own behavior as media
professionals in the course of information gathering. In all instances normative ethics must be
used as a guide, but actual decisions will depend on fine-tuning students’ understanding that
other perspectives might be more appropriate in practice. During debriefing student “reporters”
will be asked why they made certain choices; students acting as “sources” will be asked how
they felt during the interaction with “reporters.” Students who participated in the exercise, their
non-participating peers (observers) and the professor will discuss the costs and consequences of
all decisions. A consensus will be sought in order to promote a non-parochial understanding of
journalism ethics in settings outside of the United States. For the purpose of this project, the
exercises will be videotaped and used as a guide for future such training sessions in ethical
decision making for foreign-bound journalists.
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References
Black, J., & Barney, R. (2002). Search for a global media ethic. [Special issue] Journal of Mass Media
Ethics, 17(4).
Boeynik, D., & Borden, S. (2010). Making hard choices in journalism ethics: Cases and practice. New
York: Routledge
Callahan, S. (2003). New Challenges of Globalization for Journalism. Journal of Mass Media Ethics,
18, 3-15.
Gross, P., and Kopper, G. G. (2011). Understanding foreign correspondence. New York: Peter Lang.
Karadjov, C. D. (2012). Foreign Correspondents. In Wolfgang Donsbach (Ed.), The Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Communication (2nd Ed). Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
Ibrahim, D. (2003). Individual perceptions of foreign correspondents in the Middle East: An obstacle
to fair news? International Communication Gazette, 65 (1), 87-101.
Masterton, M. (2009). A clash of cultures for foreign correspondents. Pacific Journalism Review, 15
(1), 19-30.
Ward, S., & Wasserman, H., (2010). Media ethics beyond borders: A global perspective. New York:
Routledge
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