Media Ethics 2000 Abstracts
Media Ethics Division
Searching for the Journalist Phrenemos: An Exploratory Study of the Ethical Development of News Workers • Renita Coleman and Lee Wilkins, Missouri • More than 2,500 years ago Aristotle defined the ethical person as a phrenemos. More contemporary research has focused on moral development. Almost every type of profession that must grapple with ethical issues has been studied in the context of moral reasoning, except journalists. This research proposes to measure journalists’ moral development in order to compare them with other professionals, and to discover which variables are the most significant predictors of higher moral reasoning in journalists — that is, to model the journalist phrenemos.
Covering the Ethics of Death: An Exploration of Three Model Approaches • David A. Craig, Oklahoma • Through an in-depth textual analysis, this paper examines portrayal of the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia in three 1998 newspaper pieces that are exemplary in the depth of their of their treatment of ethics — and therefore, it is argued, ethically responsible in their coverage. Presentation of deontological and consequentialist issues and of ethical questions and themes is examined in these pieces, and implications for ethics coverage are discussed.
Of Joint Ventures, Sock Puppets and New Media Synergy: Ethical Codes and the Emergence of Institutional Conflicts of Interest • Charles N. Davis & Stephanie Craft, Missouri • The trend toward cross-ownership raises ethical concerns about entanglements created in the name of synergy. Ethics scholarship routinely defines conflict of interest as an individual act, which ignores the rise of the media conglomerate. This paper introduces the institutional conflict of interest. The paper outlines how media consolidation creates new conflicts of interest by outlining the term’s definitions in various professions and providing a revised definition that encompasses institutional conflicts of interest.
Ethics for Editors: What 11 Editing Textbooks Teach • Susan Keith, North Carolina • Newspaper copy editors have a vital, though often unheralded, role to play in the production of ethical journalism. As the last people to see newspaper stories before publication, they have the opportunity to raise questions that can save newspapers from unnecessarily harming readers or sources or hurting their own credibility. Copy editors can do this, however, only if they develop a good sense of how ethical principles apply to their jobs. One source for such information is the editing textbook.
Contractualist Morality in News Reporting: What Journalists Owe to Story Subjects, News Sources and The Public • Kathleen L. Mason, Syracuse • Tim Scanlon’s “What we owe to each other” is the most recent substantive addition to ethical theory, and his contractualist theory is the topic of heated philosophical debate. His central notion, that right and wrong “are judgments about what would be permitted by principles that could not reasonably be rejected,” is presented in application to situations faced in daily life. This paper examines how Scanlon’s theory might be used by journalists as they seek to balance their duty to the public against their duties to the subjects and sources.
Beyond Kant Lite: Journalists and the Categorical Imperative • Lee Anne Peck, Ohio • The misunderstanding of Kant’s ethical theory by journalists comes in many forms. According to John Merrill, journalists may thing that if they apply the Categorical Imperative (CI), they are nothing more than “moral robots.” The CI, however, does not tell a person what to do; thus, this paper explores what the CI really entails and what journalists can take from it.
Philosophy in the Trenches: How Newspaper Editors Approach Ethical Questions • Patrick Lee Plaisance, Syracuse • This study sought to identify the various strains of philosophical principles brought to bear on ethical dilemmas by working journalists. A nationwide survey of newspaper managing editors and news editors solicited actual ethical dilemmas and examined how respondents assessed statements that corresponded to various philosophical principles. The study suggested that journalists tend to favor specific philosophical approaches when they are confronted with certain types of ethical questions, affirming calls by some media ethicists for a “pluralistic” approach in newsrooms.
The Concept of Media Accountability Reconsidered • Patrick Lee Plaisance, Syracuse • The concept of media accountability is widely used but remains inadequately defined in the literature and often is restricted to a one-dimensional interpretation. This study explores perceptions of accountability as manifestations of claims to responsibility, based on philosophical conceptions of the two terms, and suggests media accountability to be more broadly understood as a dynamic of interaction between a given medium and the value sets of individuals or groups receiving messages. The shape-shifting nature of the concept contributes to the volatility of debate surrounding conflicting notions of press freedom and responsibility.
Electronic Discussion Groups: An Effective Journalistic Ethical Forum? • Thomas E. Ruggiero, Texas-El Paso • Mass communication literature suggests a perceived ineffectuality of past and current journalistic ethical forums, such as news councils, ombudsmen, ethical codes, academic analysis and journalism reviews, by American journalists. This study investigates the ramifications of the recent introduction of electronic discussion groups, such as “LISTSERVs” and “electronic mailing lists,” as a mode of journalistic ethical discussion. Results of an e-mail questionnaire to 139 working journalists at 69 daily general-interest U.S. newspapers suggest that, while American journalists are overwhelmingly using e-mail to conduct both professional and personal business, it is unlikely, at least at this time, that very many are logging on to electronic discussion groups to discuss ethical issues.
Reporting on Private Affairs Of Public People: A Longitudinal Study of Newspaper Ethical Practices and Concerns, 1993-1999 • Sigman Splichal and Bruce Garrison, Miami • In 1987, after the Miami Herald reported that Democratic presidential hopeful Gary Hart had spent a night in a Washington D.C. townhouse with a young model, a national debate ensued over the proper bounds of reporting about the private lives of public officials. As that debate matured, the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee summed it up: “ . . . the rules have certainly changed.” The New Republic also weighed in on the issue: The Herald had “opened a sluice gate that will not be easily closed.”
The Moral Authority of the Minnesota News Council: Statements of Principle and Uses of Precedent • Erik Forde Ugland and Jack Breslin, Minnesota • This study addresses the Minnesota News Council’s moral authority — that is, its ability to serve as a referent for the moral choices of others — and how its authority is affected by perceptions of its legitimacy. After analyzing all of the Council’s 125 written determinations, the authors argue that the Council’s legitimacy and authority could be enlarged by clearer statements of ethical principles, explicit expressions of standards of conduct, and more consistent references to precedent.
Testing A Theoretical Model of Journalistic Invasion of Privacy Using Structural Equation Modeling • Samuel P. Winch and L. Kim Tan, Nanyang Tech • Data on invasion of privacy — such as stories identifying crime victims, photographs of grieving people and stories about people’s financial status — obtained through a content analysis of newspapers over 30 years were analyzed with social/structural data such as literacy rate, crime rate and urbanization to validate a theoretical model of privacy using structural equation modeling. Tentatively, urbanization and industrialization seem to predict a decreased incidence in certain types of journalistic invasion of privacy.
Print friendly
