Leopold's job as journalist well done, despite ethical questions

What is ethics?

Throughout the course of ones education in the Missouri school of journalism, numerous courses have devoted time towards attempting to establish what is considered to be ethical and unethical. Truth be told, many students still aren’t sure, and as the journalism world continues to change and evolve the lines that once divided the ethical decisions from the unethical are blurring.

Jason Leopold’s News Junkie had great examples of ethical debate throughout its pages, and yet there can still be heated arguments over many of the events that shaped the journalism career of Leopold.

For instance, one might come to the conclusion that it was completely unethical of Leopold to lie on his resume about graduating from NYU with a degree in journalism. Sure lying is never a practice of good ethics, yet in today’s journalism world what was really the harm in this falsification? Another major topic of conversation in a number of the classes being offered to journalism majors concerns the growth of citizen journalism. If people all around the country are pretending to be journalists without a journalism degree, what difference does it make if Leopold lied about his education?

If Leopold wanted to pursue a career in journalism without the degree, it would have been nearly impossible to get hired by the Times or Dow Jones. Say he still wants to write and dig up breaking news, and decides to start publishing a blog; then, major newspapers and wire services would have a major problem with the fact that they aren’t landing the stories and some blogger was. Was it unethical to lie on his resume? Sure. But not nearly to the extent one might think.

Leopold’s methods of gathering information by playing two sources against one another, turning on sources or using anonymous sources in his stories leaves plenty to be desired and is clearly unethical. However, considering the crises he was covering with the California energy situation and Enron, it was extremely ethical to gather important information and fill the public in regarding the ways in which they were being deceived and screwed out of money and electricity.

Great journalists are the gatekeepers to the people and organizations within the industry pride themselves on being the first to release a breaking news story. They can’t have it both ways though. It would be nearly impossible to break any real important news by being completely ethical about it. Very few sources are willing to just spill their guts and go on record about an important or controversial topic. On one hand, Leopold’s decision to use anonymous sources is a terrible practice for any journalist. Heck, the Columbia Missourian wouldn’t allow any of his stories to run. On the other hand, Leopold and his editors should be applauded for deciding that the information be released regardless of how the information was acquired.

The only thing certain about ethics is that it is a matter of opinion, not fact. One unethical decision could be viewed as ethical by some and vice versa. That same unethical decision could lead to an ethical one down the road involving the exact same topic or story. Questions surrounding ethics will continue to be asked in journalism classes around the country and pondered by young, aspiring journalists everywhere throughout their entire life.