I was browsing through the "Grade the News" website over the weekend, and I came across and ethics issue that the site brought up over the summer. I know it's a bit dated, but it's certainly worth discussing.
Basically, 'Grade the News' reported that back in july of this year that the San Jose Mercury News ran an "above the fold page 1A story about the 'sport' of competitive eating." The huge article read "could you eat 59 1/2 of these?..He can!!" (Shows a picture of a San Jose Student beaming away, surrounded by a sea of hotdogs).
Now, aside from the fact that this was the BEST front-page story that the paper could come up with that day, 'Grade the News' brings up an interesting point -- was it ethical of the paper to run this story front and center, knowing how much of an issue obesity is at the moment. In the editorial section, they even wrote that the concept of an eating contest merely reflects our country's negative relationship with food, however, they also felt the need to reward the mighty eater with a news spread, because of all of his hard work.
In my opinion, this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. The paper is basically saying, yes we know that it was slightly bad of us to support this story, but because this student ate so much, we feel the need to honor his achievements anyway..regardless of the consequences it could have on the community.
Grade the news agrees that stories like this only glorify America's gluttiny. You don't see the Merc. putting health stories on the front page, so why on earth should this get such recognition. There are too many morbidly overweight people in this country to be running a story about a fat kid who can eat 60 hotdogs (esp. on the front page). It was unethical and personally, I think it was very distasteful of the editors to let it go to print.
No wonder 'grade the news' only gave the Merc. a C+ in terms of its choices of newsworthy stories. Step it up kids!
What does everyone else think???
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1 comment:
Hadn't thought about it, but GTN has a strong point. That it was on the front page may be the point. If they led the feature section with it, perhaps they could argue that they'd run a dozen other "responsible" stories. Or the original story could have raised the issue of such contests having a bad effect.
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