What ever happened to doing the righ thing for no other reason than it was the right thing? After 3 decades chasing news, and almost four teaching news and television in a community college I still ask that question. This afternoon while talking to my class about ethical standards that they should hold themselves up to, I was faced with the same question. Where did integrity go? It seems to be missing from such a large part of our society, and it’s both maddening and heartbreaking.
Something occurred to me as I was speaking to my journalism class about things like being accountable & transparent, conflict of interest, and taking responsibility… that’s me! I can’t pinpoint an exact reason why, but I have always wanted to be a person of good character. Perhaps it has something to do with how my family treated me growing up. Perhaps it has something to do with the morals that were instilled to me at a young age. Perhaps it was the discipline I learned in college marching band (laugh if you want, but that experience has been integral to who I am today.) Perhaps it was practicing those same ethics that are expected of journalists from my early 20’s to my early 50’s. I’m guessing my character comes from all of the above.
You might think, “Good for you, Tim.” Then you might ask “why does this matter to me?” I am really glad that you did ask. I do my dead level best to operate in every facet of my life attempting to do the right thing. I do so simply because it is the right thing. I’ve never really fit in with the majority of any crowd, so I’m comfortable with it. Now let me explain how it could potentially matter to you. As an independent video producer I answer a lot of questions about shooting and editing video, and even more questions about pricing.
Here’s the transparency part of my ethics: I charge an hourly rate no matter what I’m doing on a client’s behalf. I do that because in my mind it keeps both the client and myself fair and honest. Let me give you an example: I don’t want to quote someone $450 to do a job that really was only worth $300 of my time. That feels dishonest to me. On the other hand, I don’t want someone to pay me $300 then expect $600 worth of work from me. It’s not fair to either party to get ripped off, so I try to mitigate that in this manner. It is therefore incumbent on me to be able to guess your final bill based on what you tell me that you want.
At the end of any project for any client I am able to give them an accurate total of the time I spent working on their job. It’s something that I have always done. There’s accuracy in action. To that end, I need clients to be upfront and honest about what their expectations are before we begin a project. There’s another ethical principal. I make this statement because I cannot even tell you how many times people have undersold what their expectations were, then incrementally increased the amount of work that they wanted done as the job went on. Then, upon receipt of an invoice detailing all of the additional work that occurred outside the original scope of a job, got upset about the final price tag. In this case it’s not that you get what you pay for, rather, you pay for what you get.
“Yes ma’am I’m happy to make changes to the editing, but I need for you to understand that in doing a 6th revision on a 75 second video, it will change your bottom line. Please be aware that we’re already 3 hours over the quote that I gave you. And you said that you need how many? Was it 2 or 3 more videos edited from the footage that we shot?” That’s not an exaggeration. This really happened to me some time back. By the end of it all I truly felt like it was a bait and switch kind of situation, and nobody walked away from the project very happy. What ethics did we touch on there? I can count honesty, accuracy, transparency… anyway, I’ll wrap this up with a simple request.
When you ask me to make a video for you please understand that I am going to do the absolute best job that I can to satisfy your requirements. I also strive to deliver before an agreed upon delivery date. I operate my business with integrity, if for no other reason than it’s the right thing to do. I will be honest, fair and forthcoming with information. I respectfully ask that you do the same in return. And, if we all operate in that manner everybody wins.
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