Please respond to the following ethical dilemma making a blog post of your own. Respond with a comment to at least one of the blog posts by your classmates on this issue.
You are a reporter for the city newspaper. You are secretly married (or at least only your closest friends know you are married) to a member of the city council who does not share your last name.
Your city council member spouse has been accused of taking bribes to vote certain ways on development projects that benefit the companies offering the bribes.
Your paper editor asks you to cover the story. He has no idea you are married to the member of the city council. Do you tell your editor that you cannot ethically cover the story because it concerns your spouse or do you tell the editor about the situation and let him decide whether you should write the story or do you write the story and conceal that you are married?
What’s the ethical issue that is raised here? How can it have negative consequenes for a newspaper? If you write the story and it becomes known that you are the spouse, are there likely to be negative consequences for you as a journalist?