Sunday, April 27, 2014

My Take Away from Journalism 4470

This ethics class it the third ethics class that I have taken at UNT.  While this one focuses mainly on the journalism and advertising side of things, my others focused on media ethics and the other with race and gender.  I now feel as if I know all sides of the ethical stratosphere for the media world, and it is very helpful to know what to do and what not to do when I go on to be a professional in this field.
                The part I enjoy most about these classes are the case studies that we use to gain some knowledge about.  My personal favorite is the last case study we did over the Blackfish documentary and SeaWorld controversy.  I had seen Blackfish when it originally first came out, and I knew that the film would not be very good for SeaWorld.  However, what was most interesting was to see the way in which SeaWorld handled all of the controversy.  Let’s just say, they didn’t handle it very well.  It surprised me how much SeaWorld has gotten away with over the past 30 years, especially when it came to protecting it’s trainers and the killer whales.  The biggest issue I saw with SeaWorld and Blackfish was the fact that SeaWorld said that Dawn Brancheau was responsible for her own death because she had her hair in a ponytail.  It’s kind of amazing how far a place like SeaWorld will go just to cover up their own mistakes.  It is comforting to know that SeaWorld has taken a major blow and isn’t doing as well as they used to.

                Another part of this class that I really enjoyed was the second blog post we did, which was over ethics in advertising.  I find it interesting because I do more of the PR side of journalism, and so when I can research case studies on advertising, I feel like I learn a lot.  It is a little insane to me to know how much some companies get away with their advertising.  The one I mainly talked about was American Apparel, and their objectification towards women and promiscuous advertising. I remember reading articles about the owner of American Apparel and he has always caused trouble because of his perversion. 
                One of my favorite lectures was over subliminal advertising.  I had always believed that subliminal advertising was very real, but after the lecture I was a little unsure.  However, there were some advertisements that I felt like were looked into too much by people, such as Coca-Cola where people swear they see a person snorting cocaine in the logo.  I think people try a little too hard sometimes when trying to find subliminal signs in advertising.  While I still believe that subliminal advertising is somewhat prominent, I also don’t think that advertisers try that hard to get someone to buy their product.  While it is fun to research different theories that people have about certain logos or advertisements they sometimes are a bit too much.

          One of the “oh-wow,” moments that I had came from when we talked more about the law in media.  I think that one thing we forget as journalists or PR people is the fact that you have to deal with a lot of legal issues as well, and you have to be very careful about what you put out there.  We focused mostly on libel and slander, and while researching for blog, I realized just with one simply statement, you can start an entire legal battle that can cost you.  It is a little intimidating thinking about all that can go wrong, but it is also good to learn about it, so that we know not what to do when we work in this field.  It seems that you also learn a lot about just how protective people are of their trademarks and copyright material.  The most shocking one was when Starbucks tried to sue that other coffee logo even though it really did not look that similar.  However, when a company like Starbucks, with its’ wide reach, doesn’t like something, it is a lot easier for them to sue another company and win.  I have always found the legal side of media ethics to be the most interesting, and it was nice to hear about cases on the journalism and advertising side of things. 
                The most important thing I learned that can help me in my profession was mainly the law part, but really all of what we learned is most likely going to be used at least once when I go on to be a professional.  Ethics is an important class for college students to take mostly, because we haven’t fully worked in the professional environment yet, and if we can go into a job with a code of ethics already learned, we can be more successful. 


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