All year we have been talking about trust. That is what all these conversations about a journalists responsibility to the public. In the end, no matter what, the public must trust them or they are going to get their news elsewhere. A journalist cannot be trusted if they don't have a conscience to deter them from making decisions that could potentially lose the trust of the public.
Take for example Jayson Blair who worked for the New York Times in 2002. Come to find out he plagiarized articles and gave eyewitness accounts for places he had never been. Not only did he not deserve the trust of the public, but he lost the trust of all his colleagues. Because of his mistakes, people started rethinking how much they could trust journalists, since Blair had gone through several editors who loved his work before they realized that it wasn't his.
Now if Blair had a conscience he never would have lied about all these things and tested the trust of the public. His personal code of ethics would have told him to actually do work and write his own stories.
We, as journalists, need to have that personal code of ethics and it is up to those in the newsroom (producers, editors, etc.) to make the atmosphere one that allows people to feel comfortable being open about their ethics and values. So to all you future producers and editors: Don't shoot people down when they say, "I think that story is racist." or "That is just wrong."
If journalists feel comfortable talking about these things and they aren't blackballed and if those in charge will listen to journalists when they make a complaint about something (like the journalists who had suspicions about Jayson Blair but didn't have their voices heard in the newsroom) then it is more likely that things won't (or shouldn't) happen that could cause the public to reconsider where their trust lies.
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