I just found this article online, and it caught my eye because of the questions it raised. If you don't have time to click on the link, don't worry, I'll recap.
Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Viet Chien was just sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly falsifying the information in a story that got several high ranking government authorities fired. He presented information that these officials were gambling using embezzled funds. His partner, Nguyen Van Hai, was sentenced to two years of "re-education without detention."
Chien was accused of "abusing democratic freedoms."
Now, several things caught my eye about this story, and it wasn't just the suspicious nature of how the charges against the officials were suddenly dropped.
I wonder if it is worth it for a journalist to go to prison to preserve the truth of their article, or to protect a source. Should we, as journalists, be so focused on telling the truth that we abandon personal safety?
And what about our families? Do we risk disgracing them because we're hung up on protecting a criminal's name? Or because we are so determined that what we have written is the truth, and we refuse to back down?
I realize that there is no right answer to this question, and that everyone's opinions will vary, but what do you think? Should journalists risk it all for their profession? Or is there an invisible line we shouldn't cross; say if something endangered our lives or the lives of our friends or family? Is the truth worth everything?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
This is a hard topic to try to clarify, and I don't feel there is a definite answer. Of course from a theory point of view we should do everything to protect a source and tell the truth. But it's hard to say when other people are involved and can be in risk based on these decisions. But I do believe that we need to maintain integrity- but it's not easy to describe what that means.
Yeah, definitely a hard subject. I mean, who's going to want to risk life and family for their job? Since it is a business, couldn't we just set a line for what can be kept confidential and what would be information that's beyond that boundary? That way, reporters would know what things are too dangerous to investigate, thus pursue it at their own risk.
Post a Comment