Ethically Speaking..

Ethics is a concern that many professionals in any industry confront at some stage or another, and there is no difference for journalists. As a student of journalism, questions of ethics are thrown around quite often and I think we all try to look at the matter a little more romantically than what the reality calls for.

Some media critics see ethical journalism as a oxymoron that helps some journos sleep at night and forget their dodgy dealings. Ethics in modern journalism can concern the price at which journalists and news outlets will pay for a story. I've learnt from being a news consumer and studying the profession that not all journalism is about hard work or digging up the story and getting interviews easily. If people have a great story to sell that will appeal to a mass audience, chances are they are going to sell to the highest bid.

After some discussion about this topic in my journalism class, it got me thinking about the Beaconsfield miners who were trapped in a Victorian mine in April 2006.

 The two miners from Beaconsfield, trapped underground, sold their story to Channel Nine after a bidding war erupted for a reported $2 million. Chequebook journalism is not a new thing to the profession, however seeing such large amounts can be a little perturbing for some with a idyllic reality of journalism and the methods for getting a story and the interviewees along with it.  Nicola Goc and Jason Bainbridge's The Beaconsfield mine disaster and the evolution of chequebook journalism looks at nature of chequebook journalism and how news has changed to values of entertainment and exclusivity, and not traditional news values. 

Looking over Goc and Bainbridge's analysis, I'm most interested by the miner's bold attitude towards the competing television stations bidding for their dramatic story. Todd Russell demanded Eddie McGuire, the then CEO of Channel Nine to "tell me how big your chequebook is and we'll talk" on national television on Nine's The Footy Show.

I think chequebook journalism is placing power and control into the hands of the original storyteller - the public. Todd Russell's demands were met with an applause from the audience and eventually a deal and $2 million from Channel Nine. The media in these situations are reduced to bidders at a story auction. They gain a story which will last 24 hours and hopefully gain them an increase in audience and then its onto the next bid.