As a one man show, unethical editing might be tempting

If you assume a backpack journalists does most of his work on his own, with a camera, a marantz, and a laptop on his back, then really good journalism within ethical guidelines takes on a new meaning.

Caveat here ** I don't know how many newsrooms actually have their convergence kids do all their multi-media stuff absolutely alone, nor do I have enough experience to back up anything I'm saying**

The "Video Techniques" tutorial we read uses an example of a girl on a bike and how to capture it...50% close, 25% medium, 25% wide shots. They say an ideal shot sequence would contain a wide shot of her arriving, medium of her dismounting, then some close ups of the wheel going into place, close up of her face clicking off her helmet, an extreme close-up of her taking off her gloves, and so on. 

Here's the problem. I have one camera, and ideally it should be on a tripod. How the hell can I get all these shots? To ask her "hey one sec, let me get a shot of the bike tire going into the bike rack," is unethical. We've altered the normal stream of events and transgressed our role as flies on the wall. Read through those shots again...now imagine trying to get all of those as one person. Impossible. 

Ethics and aesthetics do not seem to get along. Looks to me like journalists get to play Phil Jackson, forcing Shaq and Kobe to play together because it works better that way. Here's to hoping newsrooms haven't gotten so cheap that backpack journalists have to do anything like this on their own, for the sake of journalism and for the sake of how journalism is perceived.