Case study

This assignment will require you to read through this ethics case study. Then, you will be asked to write an 800-1,300 word paper that addresses the following question: “Should the Tallahassee Herald publish a story that contains potentially identifying details about the whistleblower?”

In order to arrive at a thoughtful and compelling answer to that question, you’ll be asked to engage with the following four sets of questions:

What are the most relevant facts/information from the case study? (Assume the reader has limited familiarity with the case.)

What are the key ethical principles and elements from the SPJ Code of Ethics that are at play in this case? Why are they relevant given the facts/information you highlighted? Is there any tension (disagreement) among the principles that you think apply to this case?

With the central question in mind, what do you think the most ethical course of action in this case is? What might be the potential consequences to the key stakeholders (people and organizations mentioned, and perhaps not mentioned, in the case study) if the Herald were to follow your suggestion? Please be specific in what you think the Herald should do and what the impacts might be.

Given your assessment, why do you think your suggestion is the most ethical course of action?

Your responses to these sets of questions should be integrated into a single, coherent academic paper. Put another way, do not answer them separately or use bullet points. This assignment draws mostly on the Learning Materials from Week 8. There is no right answer to the dilemma in this case study, but some answers are better-grounded in professional codes of ethics and are more logically consistent than others. Academic citations are not required for this assignment.