It did not take Sarah McLellan long in her career to face a situation that could put her reputation as a journalist on the line. Sarah has been the Arizona Coyotes beat reporter since 2012, when the Coyotes made the Western Conference Finals. As a young reporter for the Coyotes she sat down with the GM at the time, Don Maloney, for a 1-on-1 interview. In the interview, Maloney issued a quote about the atmosphere in Chicago following a controversial hit on Marián Hossa that was delivered by Raffi Torres. "You would think Raffi murdered a bus load of children the way he's portrayed here in Chicago,” Don Maloney said. With the powerful message in the quote people may think this is the ethical situation at hand, but it isn’t. The actual dilemma sprouted when she was contacted by a radio station asking her to release the audio of the quote. …show more content…
“I just did my job, did my reporting, asked my question, and I put out the response and put it in my story and I felt like that was the end of my job.” The quote, that she has since pondered if she should have even used in the story, was not the focal point, instead just something to catch the attention and the gravity of the situation. “I remember writing a story, and it wasn’t something I personally sensationalized, I decided to use the quote because I felt it was worth it,” McLellan said. “Of course with Twitter and social media, I mean it wasn’t in the headline or the lead paragraph, I just used is as a tenner of the situation, but of course it took off and went viral.” Without facing a situation like this before, McLellan really wasn’t sure what to do at first, but she sought her editor’s advice on the situation, hoping they would know how to handle