1. THE MEDIA OF MASS COMMUNICATION 11th Edition John Vivian
PowerPoint™ Prepared by Amy M. Carwile
Texas A&M University at Texarkana
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2. Chapter 17: Ethics Thematic Chapter Overview Media Technology
Media Economics
Media Ethics
Media & Democracy
Elitism & Populism
Media Tomorrow
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3. The Difficulty of Ethics
Prescriptive Ethics
Privacy
Timeliness
Fairness
Conflict of Duties
Duty to Self
Duty to Audience
Duty to Employer
Duty to Profession
Duty to Society
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4. How do ethics codes sometimes fail in helping media professionals make the right decisions?
If you were a college newspaper editor, would you accept an all-expenses-paid trip to a Hollywood movie premiere? Is this ethical?
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5. Media Ethics Media Commitment Audience Expectation
A single ethics standard is impossible to apply to the mass media.
Audience Expectation
The audience brings a range of expectations to different media sources.
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6. What is the role of audience expectations in media ethics?
How does a media organization’s self-concept guide decision-making in ethics?
What is the role of audience expectations in media ethics?
Why do ethics expectations differ among media organizations?
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7. Moral Principles The Golden Mean “Do Unto Others”
Aristotle
“Do Unto Others”
Judeo-Christian
Categorical Imperative
Immanuel Kant
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8. Moral Principles (continued)
Utilitarian Ethics
John Stuart Mill
Pragmatic Ethics
John Dewey
Egalitarian Ethics
John Rawls
Social Responsibility
Robert Hutchins
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9. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Aristotle’s Golden Mean?
Was Immanuel Kant merely restating the much older “do unto others” maxim?
How is John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism attractive to people in modern democracies?
What is the problem of using outcomes to determine media ethical behavior?
How realistic is the egalitarianism of John Rawls in guiding media behavior?
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10. Process vs. Outcome Deontological Ethics Telelogical Ethics
Theories: Divine Command, Secular Command, Libertarian, Categorical Imperative
Based on duty
Telelogical Ethics
Theories: Pragmatic, Utilitarian, Social Responsibility
Based on Results
Situational Ethics
Case-by-case basis
Can lead to inconsistencies
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11. As a media consumer, would you rather that media people followed deontological or telelogical ethics? Why?
What the plusses and minuses of situational ethics to sort through ethical dilemmas?
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12. Potter’s Box Ralph Potter Four Quadrants Intellectual Satisfaction
Situation
Values
Principles
Loyalties
Intellectual Satisfaction
Values
Situation
Principles
Loyalties
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13. You are a news reporter. A candidate for mayor tells you that the incumbent mayor is in cahoots with organized crime. What a bombshell story! Use Potter’s Box to decide whether to rush to tell the story.
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14. Ethics, Law & Practicality
Ethics and Law
Separate but related concepts
Accepted Practices
Actions taken by media outlets routinely without consideration of ethical consequences
Prudence and Ethics
Applying wisdom, not principles, to an ethical situation
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15. How do law and ethics guide media behavior differently?
What is the problem of “we always do it that way” as a guide for ethical media behavior?
Should prudence ever trump ethics?
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16. Unsettling Media Issues
Plagiarism
Misrepresentation
Gifts, Junkets and Meals
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17. Plagiarism Questions of Plagiary Cut-and-Paste Mentality
Institutionalized exchanging of stories
The role of Public Relations in story generation
Monitoring the competition
Subliminal memory and innocent recall
Cut-and-Paste Mentality
Chicago Tribune rewrote a story from the Jerusalem Post
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18. POINT
Traditionalists make the case that it’s only right that scholars and other people who create new intellectual property acknowledge those on whose work they draw.
To traditionalists it’s a moral issue – the right thing to do.
Traditionalists call it theft to expropriate someone else’s work without permission or even a credit.
COUNTERPOINT
To attempt to restrain the free flow of information is to place artificial human limitation that ultimately will fail.
So why fight the inevitable?
Old-style conventions like footnoting should be seen as dams that deny the free exchange of information and ideas by artificially slowing the process.
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19. Misrepresentation Janet Cooke Other Examples Washington Post
Staging news
Re-creations
Reenactments on reality programs
Docudramas
Selective editing
Fictional Methods
New journalism
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20. Gifts, Junkets and Meals
Condemned by media ethics
Inherently wrong vs. perception of wrong
Free tickets and free materials for review
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21. How have traditional media practices muddied a strict view of plagiarism?
Can staging and even fictionalizing have a legitimate role in news? How about in long-form journalism like biographies?
As a news editor, how would you handle a proposal from the National Guard to ferry a reporter in a Guard aircraft to hometown unit training exercises?
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