Ethics + Journalism...still a working equation?

It's a world where journalists are hated as much as celebrities are emulated and stalked.

It's a world where fabrications and exaggerations are the only things that keep people interested in a good story.

It's a world where people care more about Kate Gosselin's new hair than the new healthcare plan.

(I'm leaving the earthquake in Haiti out of this, because it has truly shown that we are capable of doing wonderful things with both our political and star power.)

The American people want their news, and they want it any way they can get it. CNN.com, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, and MSNBC are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of news outlets out there on the web. And now, anyone can be a journalist, thanks to blogs not unlike this one.

But there is still an age-old question that hangs in the air even as print journalism morphs into cyber-journalism: is it ethical?

My new communications class this semester is all about ethics. The first article we had to read was a tragic story about two 10-year-old boys who viciously murdered an innocent 2-year-old after luring him away from his mother at a shopping mall in England. When covering the trial, the UK press refused to release the names or backgrounds of the two offenders, leaving the door open for them to later be paroled and given new identities.

The American people? Not so okay with this. The press over here released both names and backgrounds of the boys. The UK claims it was protecting the boys and their families from harm. So who was ethical--the US or the UK?

Personally, I'm on our side with this one. There is a responsbility to report the news to the public, names and backgrounds included. Yes, the offenders were 10, but they had committed an act so horrific and atrocious, I find it hard to muster any sympathy or concern for their "privacy." Minors in age they may have been, but minor this crime was not.

Either way, it raises a question that sometimes causes people to talk in circles. Who's right? Who's wrong? Are the standards of journalism changing as cyberspace and blogging evolve?

I guess I'll just have to stay tuned this semester to find out.