Wild Card

Wild Card: Having Ethical Integrity As A Writer 

"Ethical integrity is essential to writing and publication."  For any media worker, it is extremely important to deliver factual information, while establishing authorship and crediting where neccessary. Writers are like the mothers of the world. Things happen, we ask what happen, and then we go and tell our friends (the public.) How will the public know about the United States President's latest scandalous activity? How will the public know about new bill being brought to the floor of the Senate in one week's time? The answer is writers, media workers, publishers, reporters, and journalists. We are the source, and as a duty to our country, we need to have ethical integrity when delivering our final drafts. 

Being unethical as a writer is more than just plagiarism and fabrication; it extends to ettiquete, authorship, intellectual conflict of interest, political conflict of interest, and financial conflict of interest. Certain ethical principles have been established through movements and federal laws in order to prevent unfair dismissal between other reporters and the public. Becuase of the Freedom of Information Act, the Plagirism and Fabrication federal laws, and Copyright and Fair Use laws, the public is able to hold writers accountable for misusing their establishing credibility to, quite simply, be unethical.  

                                                    Academic Writing, An Unethical Yet Attractive Opportunity

This article was written by a college student that previously joined a content writing group online. To his/her suprise, there were countless offers, one being an offer to write a senior research project $1 per word, offering for up to 5,000 word essays. These students are called "academic writers." It is completely dishonest and simply, it's just wrong. Students are choosing to pay large sums of money to avoid doing work that is too hard or takes up too much of their time. On a side (but important) note, these students aren't learning anything. If you're allowing someone to do your work for you in a class specifically for your degree, when you walk across the stage and recieve your diploma, what's after that? What you were supposed to learn for your first job in the classroom teaching a bunch of high schoolers is nowhere to be found. Having ethical integrity as a student is especially important, as it sharpens your knowledge and research skills, as well as shaping you to be honest and willing.  

Ethical Integrity build the following: 

• excellent research skills
• ability to identify problems and find alternative solutions
• decency and moral character 
• knowledge of subject matters
• reliability in personal credibility as a jounralist

A writer's job is not only to write for themselves and the for the succession of his/her company, but a writer's job is to write for the people. Ensuring factual information, crediting where needed, avoiding exploitation of others, and avoiding potential conflicts of interests will create room for ethical integrity to grow within. Acedmic writing is a growing reason that most students fail at being ethical and honest with their proffesors and their peers. Because of this, jounralists all over the world strive to reinforce global code of ethics so that we may all see ethical integrity as a value.