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The Cindy Herbig case revolves around the distinguished Herbig family from Missoula, Montana. The Herbig’s daughter Cindy, who did well enough in high school to obtain a scholarship to Radcliffe College, was killed in Washington D.C. while working as a prostitute. The controversy of this case comes from the way that the Missoulian and the Post reported on this story. Both newspapers were aware of the family’s status and the damage that this story would do to the family’s name. Also they were asked by the family’s lawyer to not publish the story out of respect for Cindy and her grieving family. Despite this formal request both papers published the story. The Post published this story because they believed that it would both bring attention to the problem of prostitution in the D.C. area and their primary business concerns. The Missoulian published a heavily toned down version of this story because of the journalism community. The main editor of this paper stated that journalists will always have to release stories when they are newsworthy even if they are negative stories. These facts of the Cindy Herbig case will allow us to review the ethics of this case for both news sources.

Utilitarian ethics look for the greatest happiness and least amount of pain. In Cindy Herbig’s case neither were upheld. In the case of the Post’s article, their intentions were to increase their ratings and illuminate the issue of prostitution in their area. The article that they wrote showed Cindy in a negative light as they tried to highlight the fact that she liked being a prostitute. The article published by the Missoulian also told the public that she was a prostitute, but they did not highlight the fact that she enjoyed being one. With all of this b...

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...complex views that this principle has on this case.

Overall most of these principles have a defined view of this case. I believe that the strongest principles are Duty ethics and the ethics of Virtue. Duty ethics are important to this case because of the way that it looks at the intentions of the parties involved. From this principle we can understand that the Missoulian had to publish the story out of necessity for remaining credible. While we can also see that the Post published this article for its own reasons. The ethics of virtue is also helpful when examining this case because it looks at the extremes of this issue. When these extremes are viewed it becomes apparent that the Missoulian article was relatively close to the middle point between the two extremes. Both of these principles support the fact that the Missoulian acted ethically while the Post did not.