It would be easy to pile on Peter Chen, the government professor at the University of Sydney who created an assignment that involved pitching made-up stories to the Tharunka student newspaper. Here’s the assignment, according to the paper’s “USYD media assignment not big on ethics” editorial:
Project 2: Prank Tharunka
Using your understanding of the process-orientation of journalism, design and execute a false story that you attempt to get published in the UNSW student newspaper, Tharunka. You will need to research the aspects of journalistic practice used by the paper, what type of issues are likely to be covered, and how you would go about getting the issue into the paper. Once completed (successfully or not), reflect on the practice of PR that uses an understanding of media practice to promote particular messages in your final report.’
The editorial quotes students who were upset by assignment, noting its conflict with the school’s ethical rules, the assignment’s inflexibility in allowing students to pitch a legitimate story, and how students who want to work for the student paper would burn a bridge.
Australian media and others have picked up the story, including a Crikey story that quotes the professor saying he didn’t see real problems with an assignment that moved beyond the typical boring papers required in such classes: “This is not a dangerous activity — we’re not cutting people’s organs out of their stomachs,” Crikey quotes him as saying a few days ago. Since then, the publication says the assignment is under investigation by university officials.
What’s notable about the professor’s online biography is his “focus on the relationship between media and politics” but no mention of any actual work as a media practitioner. You don’t need decades of media experience to study or teach media, of course, and it’s clear his focus is more on politics than on media. But even 10 minutes in a newsroom should make it clear that pranking any news organization is wrong. Or 10 minutes in an elementary school classroom with a good teacher should make it clear that the world doesn’t revolve around you.
The lack of empathy for others, ultimately, is the ethical sin here. A medical teacher wouldn’t create an assignment that requires students to tell family members that their loved one must have an operation to cut “organs out of their stomachs.” A journalism teacher wouldn’t have students make up stories about politicians. And any teacher with empathy would not require an assignment that requires a lie.
The assignment’s lack of empathy hurts the class’ students, too. Had the assignment been to pitch a real story, the paper would have a “win” by gaining a solid story and the students would have a “win” by adding to their résumés an example of the successful pitching of a legitimate story. Or it could hurt those students, who might be less likely to be hired by honorable employees who might shy from students who don’t know it’s wrong to lie, even when an authority requires the lie.
By teaching students that it’s OK to mess with journalists, the assignment perpetuates the schism between journalists and politicians and their advisers. A key failing of politicians and their advisers is thinking of media as an “other” to be used as a means to their end of gaining and maintaining political power.