The question however is if Ambush Journalism is ethical or not. This is a very hard question to answer! First who decides what is ethical? That judgement is left in the hands of both journalist and the public.

Some journalists use this technique to obtain the latest and hottest news the outcome can sometimes be damaging or viewed as unethical. Other journalists refuse to use this technique because they

feel that it violates the basic journalistic standards of balance and fairness (Day, pg.136).

The public on the other hand wants to know everyone's private business so much that they sometimes do not care how it might affect the person or persons that the news is about. However if they were to be the subject of Ambush Journalism themselves they would most likely not like it at all.

Is this subject a gray area? Yes it is a

Journalists sometimes use the element of Ambush Journalism as a surprise technique to get the real story or news and raw emotions. This can sometimes be good because the persons true emotions are not hidden, as mentioned before, but usually the person being interviewed or ambushed does not have time to prepare and tends to have not well-reasoned answers.

This paper has taught me that in every situation as a journalist you need to look at the entire situation and determine if you are or are going to violate any of the rules in the code of ethics.

In Chung's defense, David Bartlett, president of the Radio-Television News Director's Association said "there was no attempt to deceive or trick anyone into saying something on camera that they didn't want to say," (Day, pg.137).

Another good example of Ambush Journalism was the coverage of the Olympic bombing in Atlanta. Journalists were in such a hurry to report the news that they did so in excess and disregard for the presumption of innocence. An innocent man's name was reported all over the country as the prime suspect. The damage was done and lawsuits later followed. It was an embarrassment for the nation's media and that issue was mainly discussed on talk shows. I think that this was a mild form of Ambush Journalism but still I feel that it is unethical.

will be important. After finding out that I have seen examples of Ambush Journalism in my day to day life I began to think of the most important point of the subject. That is whether it is ethical or unethical. This like I stated before is a very hard question to answer because each case is different. There is also a problem in looking at old examples of Ambush Journalism, like the Chung vs. Gingrich case. That is that it can be viewed as both ethical and unethical at the same. This is a predicament because both sides can be correct in their statements about the problem being ethical or not but a decision has to be made.

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Approximate Word count = 1596
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)