Media Ethics 2013 Abstracts
Open Competition
The Pursuit of Privacy and Common Good: The Theory and Practice of Ethical Big Data Mining for Socio-Economic Development • Debashis ‘Deb’ Aikat, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper delineates the theory and practice of ethical big data mining for socio-economic development in four parts. This paper also features a list of additional reading and big data terms with concise definitions explicating their relevance to big data mining for socio-economic development.
The Ethical Roots of the Public Forum: Pragmatism, Expressive Freedom, and Grenville Clark • David S. Allen, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee • The public forum has been connected to the functioning of democracy, expressive freedom, and the media’s role in society. While the public forum’s legal contours have been examined, the ethical foundation of the public forum has not. Relying on archival research, this paper argues that ideas about the public forum can be traced to the pragmatism of Grenville Clark, who influenced judicial opinions through his work on the American Bar Association’s Bill of Rights Committee.
Comparing the Ethics of citizen photojournalists and professional photojournalists: A coorientational study • Tara Buehner, University of South Carolina; Ana Keshelashvili • In the digital news environment, amateur images — citizen photojournalism — appear next to professional photojournalists’ photos, contributing to a probable tension and sense of professional threat among professional photojournalists. Using the coorientation approach, this study explores the ethical values of citizen photojournalists and professional photojournalists, the extent to which they agree about these values, how accurate they are in assessing each others’ values, and how congruent they perceive they are with each other.
Journalists’ Social Capital and Moral Development • Hyunjeong Choi, University of Texas at Austin • Although there are some studies on whether the media influence social capital such as political participation and civic engagement, and interest has grown in the benefits of social capital to the individual and community, few theoretical models have been advanced to explain the effect of social capital on journalists and morality in journalism. This essay suggests theoretical grounds for the argument that journalists’ social capital influences their morality in their jobs. Drawing on the three-dimensional model of social capital (structural dimension, relational dimension and cognitive dimension), this essay contends that journalists seem to have a high level of social capital; especially, they have a much greater cognitive dimension of social capital (shared vision shared codes, or shared paradigms) because of their professional codes and organizational values, and journalists’ social capital performs a function of an important predictor of their moral development.
Hack, Flacks, and Whacks: A Pilot Study of the Utility of Individualistic Ethical Orientation as a Variable of Interest in the Study of Joye Gordon, Kansas State University; Bonnie Bressers, Kansas State University • This pilot study questioned the utility of examining journalists’ individualistic ethical orientation (based on dimensions of idealism and relativism). It found that journalists’ individual ethical orientations was associated with their allegiance the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. However, individual ethical orientation did not predict journalists’ perceptions of those in public relations professions. Findings indicate that ethical orientation does have predictive value and contributes to the study of ethics in the modern media environment.
Examining the Critics’ Criticism: A Bibliographic Essay on Journalism Review Research • Susan Keith, Rutgers University • This bibliographic essay provides an introduction to sources related to an under-researched topic in media ethics history: the local journalism review movement. From 1958 to about 1986, it produced at least 40 local reviews, including Thorn, Buncombe, Overset, Countermedia, and The Pretentious Idea. Yet scholars have usually focused on just a handful of surviving reviews. This paper, part of a book project, argues that journalism reviews deserve more attention and different approaches.
Keeping HIV/AIDS Newsworthy: Ethical Dilemmas • Ammina Kothari, Rochester Institute of Technology • This study focuses on how two prominent newspapers—the Daily News, which is government owned, and the Guardian, which is private—negotiate the ethical challenges of reporting on HIV/AIDS in Tanzania using limited resources. Interviews with journalists from the two newspapers reveal how the two newspapers’ economic concerns and reluctance to invest money in a disease, which is now perceived as “old news,” has opened up space for official news sources, especially organizations, to gain privileged access to disseminate their messages and shape the discourse on HIV/AIDS. News sources use many strategies, including giving “transport allowance” and offering all-expense paid trips to the field in order to gain journalists’ attention. I also found that the news production processes in Tanzania are further complicated by financial incentives offered by news sources, raising ethical dilemmas for the journalists and concerns about the quality of the news that gets published.
From Thinking to Doing: Effects of Social Norms on Ethical Behavior in Journalism • Angela Lee, University of Texas at Austin; Renita Coleman; Logan Molyneux, University of Texas • Journalists have been shown to be highly capable of making good moral decisions (Wilkins & Coleman, 2005), but they do not always act as ethically as they are capable of. In other words, there is a gap between thinking ethically and acting ethically. Using the Reasoned Action Model (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2009), this study explores the reason for this gap and tests the proposition that social norms can help predict whether journalists will behave ethically or not. That is, social pressure to do what others think we should do, or what we think others actually are doing, can help explain why journalists act ethically or not. It found that descriptive norms were highly predictive of ethical behavior – journalists who thought that others were acting ethically on certain journalistic dilemmas were indeed more likely to act ethically themselves. It also found that injunctive norms were highly predictive of unethical behavior – that is, journalists who thought others approved of certain unethical behaviors were more likely to act unethically themselves. In addition, descriptive norms accounted for more of the variance in journalists’ ethical behavior than did injunctive norms.
The dialogic potential of social media: Assessing the ethical reasoning of companies’ public relations on Facebook and Twitter • Angela Lee, University of Texas at Austin; Homero Gil de Zuniga; Tom Johnson; Renita Coleman • Drawing from Excellence Theory and using the TARES test, this study explores Fortune 500 companies’ ethical communication practices with the general public via social media. Results from a ‘constructed week’ content analyses data set indicate that overall, companies use social media to achieve symmetrical communication. Twitter elicits the most efficient interaction to achieve these goals. Finally, while Facebook spurs more authentic and equitable content, Twitter facilitates more truthful and socially responsible content.
Leaving It There? The Hutchins Commission & Modern American Journalism • Emily Metzgar; Bill Hornaday, Indiana University • Using the recommendations of the Commission on Freedom of the Press (Hutchins Commission), we ask today’s media consumers how they rate the performance of modern American journalism. Employing original survey data, we frame findings in the context of the commission’s 1947 ideals. This article makes a contribution by presenting contemporary opinions about the performance of American journalism in the context of journalism ideals articulated by the Hutchins Commission more than 60 years ago.
Manifestations of Moral Courage among U.S. Media Exemplars • Patrick Plaisance • This project provides a phenomenological analysis of the theme of moral courage found in extensive personal interviews with 24 selected “exemplars” in American journalism and public relations. Using an established “life story” interview protocol, the analysis clarifies the link between psychological theories of moral courage and the personal and professional challenges of industry figures known for their ethical leadership. The exemplars’ incorporation of a range of ethical values has cultivated an expectation of themselves that has enabled them to claim ownership of their actions, and thus exhibit moral courage, in ways not possible if their self-identities were less integrated with their moral concerns.
Fit to post but not fit to print: Channel consistency and virtue ethics for legacy print journalism organizations • Chris Roberts, University of Alabama • Many legacy print media organizations with Web operations often have differing ethical standards between what is printed and what is posted online. This paper discusses some of the differing standards, suggests some justifications of the differences but the potentially overwhelming deleterious effects of the double standards, and offers the virtue ethics approach of Aristotle, MacIntyre, and others as a guide for decision makers at single news organizations serving multiple communication channels.
In the Shadow of Giants: The Ethics of Crime Reporting Rituals in Ireland & Canada • Romayne Smith Fullerton, University Of Western Ontario; Margaret Patterson, Duquesne University • From a study done in Canada and Ireland, the authors assert that the press council/ombudsman self-governing structure recently implemented in Ireland and employed for decades in the Netherlands and Sweden might help the Canadian press to independence from court controls and regain a deeper sense of its own stated mission: giving the public the information it needs to be self governing in a democracy. The study involved in-depth interviews with journalists and scholars, a reading of sample crime coverage, and an examination of prevailing ethics codes and accountability practices. The Irish are discovering that by foregrounding ethics, they can relax the battle against legal restraints and—to some measure—dig out from under the competitive pressures that sometimes bury their primary mission.
Juan Williams, NPR, and Role-related Responsibilities • Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri-Columbia; Elizabeth B. Hindman, Washington State University • In October 2010, NPR dismissed news analyst Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor.” This study draws on the notion of role-related responsibilities and prior scholarship on opinion-driven journalism to examine mainstream media responses to Williams’ dismissal. Through qualitative textual analysis of 96 unsigned editorials and signed opinion columns, we find media commentators articulated three role-related responsibilities for opinion-driven journalism: Purveyor of truth, facilitator of dialogue, and reflector of national mood. However, we also found significant comment on the definitional uncertainty regarding journalistic roles and responsibilities in a changing media landscape. We argue these findings speak to the confusing nature of contemporary journalism and the evermore-porous boundaries between fact and opinion.
Probing Race: Racial Discourse Analysis in Journalism Practices, an Ethical Approach • Venise Wagner, San Francisco State University • The author explores ethical reasons why journalists should employ racial lenses when reporting stories that are not obviously about race. Because the racial component in many stories is often hidden, journalists must be willing to directly explore racial implications of an issue. Racial discourse analysis is a tool that can help reporters explore racial subtexts. The author provides examples of how to use the racial discourse analysis approach and how to apply the results of such an analysis in the reporting process.
Humanity as an end: Analyzing Trayvon Martin shooting coverage using Kant’s second categorical imperative • Chad Painter, Eastern New Mexico University; Erin Willis, University of Memphis • This textual analysis examined the use of frames in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman shooting. Journalists at three national newspapers framed the incident using four themes: questioning “Stand Your Ground” laws, rallying for gun legislation, commenting on race, and using “hoodies” for political protest. Applying the theoretical foundation of Kant’s formula of humanity as an end, the researchers concluded that both Martin and Zimmerman were used as a mere means to help journalists attain their goals.
Assessing the Impact of Chinese Journalism Education on Undergraduate Student Professionalization • Jin Yang; David Arant • This study investigated the role of Chinese journalism education in the professionalization of Chinese students and concluded that Chinese journalism education did play some role in the process. A survey of Chinese journalism students found that journalism school upperclassmen embraced a wider understanding of journalistic roles including interpretive, mobilizer and adversarial roles than did lowerclassmen. The study, however, found no difference in how upperclassmen and underclassmen journalism students ranked top six values and in how they perceived the difficulty in dealing with typical ethical dilemmas.
In Search of an Ethics Code for the 21st Century Audience • Mohammad Yousuf, University of Oklahoma; David Craig, University of Oklahoma • Little media ethics literature has directly addressed the responsibilities of audience members in engagement with mediated messages. This paper, taking into account the transformed nature of the audience and its ability to communicate, proposes a code of audience ethics that draws on previous literature and on the prima facie duties of W.D. Ross. This framework is relevant to responsibilities involving messages from both traditional and nontraditional sources of news and information.
Special Call For Entertainment Ethics
‘One Night of Prime Time’: An explorative study of morality in one night of Dutch prime time television • Serena Daalmans, Radboud University Nijmegen; Ellen Hijmans, Radboud University Nijmegen; Fred Wester, Radboud University Nijmegen • Research into television’s ethical value has mostly focused on scandal genres, like Big Brother, Jersey Shore and Jerry Springer, only recently have researcher started to explore television’s moral content with a broader focus. In this study we explore and describe the types of morality and moral content of a night of Dutch prime time television, with an open and inductive approach through a qualitative content analysis. We started with a sensitizing concept that differentiated in three general types of morality (formal, informal and intuitive), and through systematic comparison of the material we worked towards a specification of the types of morality that are represented in news, reality and fiction programs. We found that three moral themes (health, safety and family) formed the moral core of the night of television, and that television content shows a plurality of moralities connected to public and private life.
Ethical Issues and Responsibilities in the Production of Reality Shows: Reorienting the Moral Compass • Jelle Mast, Erasmus University College Brussels • Striking a middle ground between an all-encompassing and incident-centered critique, this paper develops a critical, comprehensive yet differentiating account of pertinent moral issues related to the (harmful) treatment of participants in the production of hybrid ‘reality’-shows. Our focus is thus on mapping and schematizing the (potentially) harmful implications of and the responsibilities that emerge from the process of making ‘reality shows’. The analysis proceeds along three broad (not mutually exclusive) notions of ‘intrusion’, ‘humiliation’, and ‘misrepresentation’, and integrates conceptualizations with empirical findings emerging from semi-structured interviews with 12 television professionals (mostly ‘creative’) and 25 participants. We point out the role of structural factors and the relevance of (situational) differentiation, in kind and degree, and argue for the need to bring ethical considerations more squarely into the day-to-day calculations of ‘reality TV’-program-makers.
Carol Burnett Award
Hit by the Silver Bullet: When Journalists Consider Withholding Information on National Security Grounds • John Lumpkin, John Lumpkin • This study employs Kohlberg’s hierarchy of moral reasoning to analyze journalistic decision-making over whether to withhold information from the public on national security grounds. It considers cases since Sept. 11, 2001, in which a major American news outlet reported that the government requested it withhold information on such grounds. The study finds that journalists usually reported their decision at Kohlberg’s social-contract stage of reasoning, regardless of whether the information in question was published or withheld. Implications for the role of journalistic ethics in international affairs are discussed.
Manifestation of Stakeholder Model of Communitarian Ethics in the U.S. Newspapers: An Examination of Ethical Concerns in the Promotion of Public Health • Lok Pokhrel, Washington State University • This study examined some of the major communitarian ethical concerns in lifestyle health campaigns as reported in the newspapers by assessing the extent to which the news-reporting manifested the communitarian ethical qualities in such health campaigns. This study also examined the relationship between media’s attributing responsibility (individual and systemic responsibility message attributes) with the communitarian ethical qualities of such lifestyle campaigns as reported in the news media. For this purpose, the study drew on a quantitative content analysis of the U.S. newspapers (2007-2012) that had “lifestyle” “health”, “campaign”, “prevention”, and “promotion” as the key terms. Drawing on an original data set of news reports (N= 59), the study found that the individual responsibility message attribute had a negative correlation with the four qualities of communitarian ethical approach, meaning –the lifestyle campaigns that held only the individuals as responsible for the cause of the health and lifestyle related problems –scored low. However, the message with systemic frame/attributes had a positive correlation with the four qualities of communitarian ethical qualities, meaning –the lifestyle campaigns that held the external factors, such as –environment, social system, government and the role of other stakeholders as responsible for the cause of the health and lifestyle related problems –scored high in terms of communitarian ethical qualities. The study found that the newspaper samples typically discussed how the multitudes of complex factors beyond individual responsibility/control contributed to the lifestyle related health concerns.
One journalist, two roles: What happens when journalists also work as media coordinators? • Edson Tandoc, University of Missouri-Columbia; Jonathan Peters, U of Missouri Columbia • Individuals interacting with society possess multiple roles, and yet the study of journalistic role conceptions, based on the assumption that role conceptions influence journalistic outputs, has not addressed the idea that journalists possess multiple roles inside and outside the journalistic field. A peculiar arrangement in Missouri is the appointment of journalists to serve as media coordinators for the courts. Using a symbolic interactionism framework, we explore how media coordinators experience this duality of roles.
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