Courtney Hancock's Code Of Ethics Case Study

Good evening. Tonight on News Watch, Iron Woman or Gossip Girl? We will be examining the melodramatic treatment of Iron Woman, Courtney Hancock, in Australian mainstream media and see how it positions audiences.

Unfortunately, news media has become less about performances and more about scandal, drama and personalities in female sport. These news outlets are making an unambiguous appeal to the voyeuristic audience to boost readership rather than focus on the sport itself. This means that they are regularly breaking the media’s own Journalist’s Code of Ethics. It is commonplace knowledge today that newspaper articles are more often than not presenting women’s sport as more of a histrionic event rather that an event involving skill.

In The Daily Telegraph’s Matt Logue’s article, ‘Nutri-Grain Ironwoman Series: Courtney Hancock and Liz Pluimers driven on by rivalry’, the performances of both the women mentioned in the title are overshadowed by juicer story about their supposed rivalry. The title doesn’t mention how well they are doing, only the intense drive through competition. At a glance, the picture seems to be acceptable, with the ‘Nutri-Grain’ paddle in

The article’s main undoing was with the first and second laws of the Code of Ethics – 1, report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts, do not suppress relevant available facts, nor give distorting emphasis, and 2, make efforts to give the subject of any damaging report an opportunity to comment, preferably in that same report. The article contains a misleading intensity of drama and doesn’t give Pluimers a chance to respond to the negative accusations created by the author. The hero picture also portrays a ‘girl next door’ look and doesn’t really relate to the actual article about performances. Greenwood’s article, however, should be aspired to as the article is ethical and