Case Summary: The Ethics Of Serial

The Ethics of Serial During the National Prayer Breakfast, Dr. Ben Carson said something very interesting about speaking to a large audience, “I have discovered however in recent years how difficult it is to speak to a large group of people these days, and not offend someone,” and “...we’ve reached this point where we are afraid to talk about something because somebody might be offended,” (C-Span 2013). When people become offended they tend to question the ethics of that thing. Ethics asks the question, is it right or is it wrong? That’s the same question people have been trying to figure out with about certain aspects of the podcast, Serial, by Sarah Koenig. There have been two accusations that have came from the community filled with people

Serial should not be labeled as unethical for the defamation of Jay because it was really Jay’s fault for causing himself to be defamed. Two of the biggest reasons why people have lost trust in Jay was because Jay was inconsistent in his testimony and his interviews with the detectives. In Jay’s first taped interview, Jay claimed that Adnan told him about the plan to kill Hae on the same day of the murder. Then two weeks later in the next taped interview, he claims that Adnan had been planning the murder ahead of time. Later on he decides to go with his the first story of the taped interview, that he had found out about it on the day of the murder (Inconsistencies 2015). Another inconsistency involves where Adnan showed Jay, Hae’s body. In the first taped interview, Jay says that Adnan showed Hae’s body in a truck by the strip (where people sell drugs) on Edmondson Avenue. Later on in the next interview, Jay said that Adnan called him to ask him to pick him up from Best Buy because he killed Hae in the parking lot (Inconsistencies 2015). When detective Mcgillivary confronts him about this lie, Jay responds by saying “I figured there were security cameras at Best Buy. So that’s why I lied,” (Inconsistencies 2015). These discrepancies have been the driving factors behind the decline of Jay’s credibility. Jay has admitted to being part of the crime and Adnan is denying his role in the crime. The prosecution’s case against

Like, Serial covered Adnan’s life extensively and interviewed his family and friends, while for Jay’s they didn’t do much. There are two responses to this. Firstly, Serial did reach out and they did try to contact Jay for an interview but he just wouldn’t budge. Jay refused to be interviewed by Serial at first, but then when he did take part in an interview with Serial, Jay had asked Sarah not to record the interview. That doesn’t give Serial much information to go extensively in his life, so Jay is at the fault of this. Secondly, the argument assumes that the audience favors the small details in character, rather than the case itself. However, the evidence of Jay lying weighs more than his character, therefore it is more reasonable to assume that the audience would favor the evidence rather than the hints at Jay’s character. Serial is not responsible for the defamation of Jay, which means that the ethicality of the argument of Serial defaming Jay, is irrelevant because Jay defamed