ethics

• Ethics is about the deliberative process, not just the final decision
• ethics

  What's good? What makes something right? What we ought to do?
• Ethics


  A system or set of beliefs people embrace to identify what is good and bad. We don't question the validity of these beliefs (e.g. truth is preferable over falsehood). An effort to reason our way through a dilemma.
• Law


  What are we required to do?
• The real work of ethics consists of twin goals: normative (What we ought to do?) and epistemic completeness (Why we should do it?)
• Ethics


  • It's about the journey, not the destination. The focus is on the quality of the deliberative process, not the outcome.

  2. Trust your gut but use your brain. Good ethical decisions can be defended with solid, evidence-based reasoning.

  3. The art of uneasy compromise. Ethics helps us negotiate among conflicting values.
• Conflicting values


  • Honesty/truth telling vs avoiding harm to others

  Privacy vs belonging to/participating in a community

  Courage vs camaraderie

  Loyalty vs independence
• There are two schools of thought on the importance of studying ethics: cynical view and optimistic view
• The study of ethics should result in at least morally defensible decisions even if unpopular, and there should always be "well-reasoned" answers even if not right or wrong
• Journalism ethics


  A type of applied ethics, which is the analysis and application of ethical principles of relevance to the practice of news media
• Journalism ethics


  • Concerned both with advancing free and independent media while stressing responsible use of that freedom
• Journalism ethics is a natural human activity - the construction and evaluation of norms to guide conduct in journalism
• The practice of media ethics should exhibit many of the distinctive features as ethics in general - appropriate ethical beliefs, correct application, and the disposition to act ethically
• The origin of journalism ethics is the same as for all ethics - the lived experience of journalists and anyone who publicly communicates
• Historical revolution of journalism ethics

  1. First stage (16th-17th centuries): Emergence of ethical discourse in Western Europe

  2. Second stage (18th century): Press controls weakened, journalists espoused a "public ethic"

  3. Third stage (19th century): Evolution of the public ethic into an explicit liberal theory of the press

  4. Fourth stage (20th century): Development and criticism of the liberal model

  5. Fifth stage (Mixed media): Increasing numbers of non-professional citizen journalists and bloggers engaging in journalism
• Main approaches to journalism ethics

  • Authoritarian-utopian
  • Classical liberalism
  • Professional objective approach (objectivism)
  • Social responsibility
  • Interpretative
  • Advocational
  • Care-communitarian
• Historically, objectivism and social responsibility theory were twentieth-century responses to a wide-spread disillusionment with the liberal hope of the nineteenth century that an unregulated press would be a responsible educator of citizens on matters of public interest
• Both interpretative and advocational traditions believe that journalists have a duty to be more than stenographers of fact and official comment
• Care-communitarian approach

  Stresses the impact of journalism on communal values and caring relationships, attempts to restrain a news media that is often insensitive to story subjects and sources
• Incentives of ethical behavior for the media

  • Moral incentive (psychic reward in knowing you've done the right thing)
  • Practical incentive (promotes credibility and commercial success)
• The credibility gap and the ethics scandals that plague our media system now often are the result of the failure of media professionals to fully consider or acknowledge their obligations as moral agents
• A solid foundation for ethical thinking in media is needed now more than ever, as most journalists see theirs as a noble profession serving the public interest and need to behave ethically