This book presents stories of young people who had to wrestle with an ethical dilemma at the beginning of their careers in the news or persuasion media. By following along as these young media professionals make their choices, you’ll begin to understand how to ask yourself questions, envision alternatives and justify the decisions you make.

All the stories in the book are true. The authors of the chapters know the individuals involved and have interviewed them to get details on what they thought and did as they tried to resolve their ethical dilemma. We had hoped to use real names throughout the book, and about half the chapters do use them. However, ethical issues involve debate and controversy, and sometimes it’s not possible to tell a complex story from one person’s point of view without making others look bad in ways that may not be fair.

Because the problems encountered by the young professionals in the book — including dishonesty, bias, sensationalism and conflict of interest — could happen in any media workplace, you’ll find the chapters organized not by profession but by types of issues. Even if you don’t plan to be a public relations practitioner, you can learn from the situations a PR professional encounters and how he or she handles them. Plus, it always helps to get acquainted with the tasks done in other professions as you enter the working world.

The pace of change in today’s media means that when ethical issues arise, even your boss may not be sure what to do. Each professional is the architect of his or her own credibility, and each individual’s credibility is key to establishing the credibility of the media as a whole. If you can build your ethical framework on sound theory and moral reasoning, you won’t instantly know what to do about every situation that develops, but you’ll be agile enough and confident enough to reason through it.

Guy S. Reel, Ph.D. is professor and chair of the Department of Mass Communication in Rock Hill, S.C..  A former newspaper reporter and editor for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn., Reel teaches jurnalism and mass communication history.

He is author of The National Police Gazette and the Making of the Modern American Man, 1879-1906 (2006), a study of portrayed masculinities in 19th Century tabloids. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio University, his master's from the University of Memphis and hisundergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee.

Nathaniel Frederick II Ph.D. is an associate professor of mass communication and the director of the African American Studies program at Winthrop University.  He teaches courses in media law, media literacy and media entrepreneurship. His research interests include African American mediated cultural production in the twentieth century, civil rights movement activism and oral history. Frederick earned a doctorate from The Pennsylvania State University.

William Schulte, Ph.D. is an associate professor of mass communication at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He has over 11 years of community newspaper experience where his duties included layout and design, infographics, special projects, and copy editing. Schulte’s teaching duties include classes in basic and advanced reporting, multimedia and ethnics. His research includes several peer-reviewed works in social constructionist theory, media history, news worker dynamics and ritual, and pop culture. He is the author of “Social Construction and News Work: Newsworkers, Civic Function, and Resistance in the Changing Media World” (2014), this is an ethnography chronicling three newsrooms struggling in the digital paradigm. He received his doctorate from Ohio University in 2012, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Ball State University in 2004 and 1994 respectively.