Ethical Considerations

 Ethical considerations while writing anything should be a top priority for any writer. There is a lot at risk when abandoning the ethics of creation. For the greater good of public knowledge, there should be a point where authors should value the truth over made up lies manipulated for the overall goal of earning more money. The internet has blurred the ethical lines by the fact that anyone can write an article and post it as fact without any consequence what misinformation can do to the public. An example of this is Wikipedia. A site that was meant to spread information about a range of things is no longer reliable due to people being able to freely edit and insert whatever information they want. Another example is the new age of journalism, where the goal is to get as many clicks as possible without necessarily emphasizing the truth of the story. 

During our conversations in class, I kept thinking about the movie Shattered Glass. A story that follows the real life of a Stephen Glass who was a renowned journalist for The New Republic. His captivating articles were getting a lot of attention for how wild and entertaining they were, but they weren't true. This journalist fabricated over half of his articles and was found out through an online journalism company. This scandal not only costed him his job, but ruined Stephen's reputation in the writing industry.

It's easy for me to sit here and talk about how writing ethically should be the utmost importance, however, if one this is true, money will almost always win out. In this new day and age of the internet, businesses value clicks and money over the truth, and that is a scary reality.