In history it is an empire, in art it is a material used to produce work, in geography it is a village in Henderson Country, Illinois.

Media, we are going to analyze now is Mass Media. It is envisioned to reach large audience. Mediums might be as following: television, radio, broadcasting, and newspaper. Each of them is specific and needs to be treated differently. In spite of differences, the main purpose of them is to serve society. Media always shows the level of democracy in the country. If media does not provide us with the diverse viewpoints and information that is unbiased then the democracy level is undermined.

Common Cause says that media and democracy has four goals:
“The first is fighting media consolidations, the second is protecting and strengthening public broadcasting, following is ensuring that the Internet remains a vibrant open and competitive outlet for citizen discourse, and the last is developing and advancing a long-term agenda for a more democratic media.”

But despite above-mentioned aspects there are too many details that should be taken into consideration. One of the guiding principles for journalists is - minimize harm.
Level of professionalism determines further development of the events journalist is going to highlight.

While thinking over this principle-Minimize Harm one should ask him/herself whether event should be reported or not, who are the people which need to be informed about the fact, whether facts are strenthened by evidents and are not rumors, what one can do when the facts are contradictory and what is the impact on the community…

Theses are the questions that need to be answered and only after that one should decide whether publish or not, highlight or not.

Fred Brown says in his article “Asking right questions a key to minimizing harm” that:
“The heavyweight in this balancing act is the truth. Telling the truth is a journalist’s overriding duty. Considering the consequences is a tempering element — a smaller element, but nonetheless an important one.In the simplest terms, minimizing harm requires being sensitive to the consequences of what you do as a journalist.”

Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects, and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
Ethical journalism demands critical thinking and knowledge of those codes that are internationally accepted, but it is not easy task. Media mostly is limited in time; in majority cases journalists face ethical quandary and when dilemma arises journalists have consultations with managers. But being professional and ethical journalism means that one can decide him/herself, in right way, in the case when manager’s consultation is impossible to obtain.

Despite the fact that minimizing harm is one of the first things a journalist should care about, stories and facts sometimes do not give us ability to minimize harm as much as possible.
Harm may be expressed in the form of reputation, and not only.

Bob Steele, who teaches journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, asks: "What if the roles were reversed? How would I feel?" That is a very good question. Individuals answer it individually but professional and ethical journalist’s answer should satisfy international standards and should be based on codes of ethics.

This article has been featured on MediaPathBlog