THE MEDIA OF MASS COMMUNICATION 11th Edition John Vivian PowerPoint Prepared by Amy M. Carwile Texas A&M University at Texarkana This multimedia product and its contents are protected under copyright law. The following are prohibited by law: - any public performance or display, including transmission of any image over a network; - preparation of any derivative work, including the extraction, in whole or in part, of
any images; - any rental, lease, or lending of the program. Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Chapter 17: Ethics Thematic Chapter Overview Media Technology Media Economics Media Ethics
Media & Democracy Elitism & Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Populism The Difficulty of Ethics Prescriptive Ethics Privacy Timeliness Fairness Conflict of Duties
Duty Duty Duty Duty Duty to to to to to Self
Audience Employer Profession Society Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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 allexpenses-paid trip to a Hollywood movie premiere? Is this ethical? Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Media Ethics Media Commitment 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. Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. How does a media organizations 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? Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Moral Principles The Golden Mean Aristotle Do Unto Others Judeo-Christian Categorical Imperative Immanuel Kant Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Moral Principles (continued) Utilitarian Ethics John Stuart Mill Pragmatic Ethics John Dewey Egalitarian Ethics John Rawls Social Responsibility Robert Hutchins Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. What are the strengths and weaknesses of
Aristotles Golden Mean? Was Immanuel Kant merely restating the much older do unto others maxim? How is John Stuart Mills 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 Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Rawls in guiding media behavior? Process vs. Outcome Deontological 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 Copyright lead 2013, to inconsistencies 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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? Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Potters Box Ralph Potter Four Quadrants
Situation Values Principles Loyalties Intellectual Satisfaction Situation Values Principles Loyalties
Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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 Potters Box to decide whether to rush to tell the story. Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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 Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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?
Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Unsettling Media Issues Plagiarism Misrepresentation Gifts, Junkets and Meals Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Plagiarism Questions of Plagiary 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 Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. POINT COUNTERPOINT Traditionalists make the To attempt to restrain case that its only right the free flow of that scholars and other
information is to place people who create new artificial human intellectual property limitation that ultimately acknowledge those on will fail. whose work they draw. So why fight the To traditionalists its a inevitable? moral issue the right Old-style conventions thing to do. like footnoting should be Traditionalists call it theft
seen as dams that deny to expropriate someone the free exchange of elses work without information and ideas by Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. permission or even a artificially slowing the Misrepresentation Janet Cooke Washington Post Other Examples Staging news Re-creations
Reenactments on reality programs Docudramas Selective editing Fictional Methods New journalism Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Gifts, Junkets and Meals Condemned by media ethics Inherently wrong vs. perception of wrong Free tickets and free materials for review Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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 Copyright 2013, 2011, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
