Ethical Dilemmas in the Workplace: Unavoidable Challenges

Ethical issues are completely unavoidable in any workplace that someone would become involved in. “They happen every day, there is always some sort of issue that comes up.” Said Jon Murphy, Vice President of US Sales at Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of America. Ethical issues arise in all areas of the workplace. Whether that be in a production booth in California, or at a corporate office in Virginia. I even experienced quite a few ethical dilemmas at the news station I did an internship at over the summer. Wherever there are employees, or just business happening in general, ethics will have a part to play eventually.

There are three main categories that I have researched and have been witness to over the past few years: honesty, respect, and,

However, this does not always have to be the case. In certain instances in filmmaking, there are title slides or warnings that say, “Based on a true story.” Having this can make a movie more desirable to go see, more people will want to go watch it if they believe it actually happened. For instance, in the 1996 movie Fargo it starts of saying “This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” This, statement made at the beginning of the film is completely untrue. Now, granted it probably got more people talking about it and brought more people into the theatres to watch it, but it is not the truth. This isn’t mercenarily what will be dealt with as a filmmaker or producer every day, but it is a possibility that could possibly be brought

I came into the station at a particularly stressful time for the full-time employees. Two of their main directors were gone for the summer so other directors had to take on more responsibilities which, in part, made their jobs much more stressful. During my time, I saw a majority of the management show disrespect to the directors who would have technical difficulties out of their control happen on air. It came to the point where directors where receiving warnings because of these technical glitches. One day while I was observing in the director’s booth, the show had a particularly noticeable video glitch that happened on air. The director was furious and felt like he was going to get blamed for it, when the producer started to show him disrespect for it, he stood up, started yelling, and walked out of the booth. I had the opportunity to talk to the senior director at the station after this happened and he said that it was only a matter of time before one of the directors when and did something like this. The following weeks, the directors were shown more respect and given lighter workloads. The relationships between management and the workers were far from perfect, but continuing to get better even my last week at the station. The director was never punished but was given time off and a different shift from the management that he had been working