Enter media ethics: a whole field of study all by itself. The Society of Professional Journalists wrote an entire Code of Ethics to help guide journalists in making tough decisions. However, while there are guidelines that may be applied generally, the number one best guide a journalist can have is his/her own conscience.
Things are rarely clean-cut, black and white, wrong or right. Professor Campbell brought up a good point today in class when he said, "Journalists don't promise to do no harm. We promise to minimize harm." A lot of the information we journalists help bring to light will be harmful to somebody. The hope is that some good comes out of what we write. Journalists should point out the problems and injustices in our country so they can be corrected and bettered. In many ways, it's like sacrificing one person for the good of many more.
The Code is there for a reason. The guidelines outlined in it, with your personal conscience, can help clear up your ethical dilemma. A few good questions to think about: Is it okay to take some "freebies" in journalism and if so, when? Does "newsworthy" ever quash privacy? When do you comply if the government asks you not to publish something?
In the case of independent sources: what would be my source's motive for publishing this?
Watching Absence of Malice really drove home the ethics AND verification points for me. If the reporter hadn't been so focused on getting her story and paid more attention to the motives of her anonymous source and the feelings of those she was interviewing things could have turned out so much better.
Robert Phelps wrote in his book, God and the Editor: "I gradually realized I had found the guide to my life I had been searching for. It certainly wasn't religion in the classical sense: it was a secular substitute for religion. It was journalism as practiced at The New York Times." (qtd in Nieman Reports)
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