Review of international media ethics

An international orientation has been a primary goal of media ethics, especially since the MacBride Report (1980), as can be seen in cases, issues and codes of ethics that have been adopted in different countries. But work in ethical theory has also been increasingly committed to an international perspective, and three examples of it (besides the classical Habermas’ discourse ethics) are discussed in this essay: feminist ethics of care, African communal ethics, and Confucian media ethics. All these theories emphasize, in their specific ways, three major ethical principles – truth, human dignity, non-violence – that emerge from a common protonorm, a kind of first belief that can be found in all religions, philosophies, and cultures: the sacredness of life. Given the dilemmas and moral issues that the media face in today’s volatile world, a commitment with these universal values will give communication education and practice long-term vitality

Television Technology and Moral Literacy

Presented to the WMU Center for the Study of Ethics in Society March 22, 1990

Panorâmica da ética dos media no plano internacional

Uma orientação de âmbito internacional tem sido um objectivo da ética dos media, sobretudo desde a publicação do Relatório MacBride (1980), como pode ser constatado a partir de casos, temáticas e códigos de ética que têm sido adoptados em diferentes países. Mas as teorias da ética têm-se igualmente desenvolvido cada vez mais numa perspectiva internacional, e três exemplos disso (para além da clássica ética do discurso, de Habermas) são debatidos neste ensaio: a ética feminista do cuidar, a ética comunal africana e a ética dos media confucionista. Todas estas teorias enfatizam, a seu modo, três princípios éticos básicos – verdade, dignidade humana, não-violência – que emergem, por sua vez, de uma proto-norma comum, uma espécie de crença primeira que pode ser encontrada em todas as religiões, filosofias e culturas: o carácter sagrado da vida. Atendendo aos dilemas e desafios morais que os media enfrentam no mundo volátil em que vivemos hoje, um compromisso com estes valores universais trará uma vitalidade duradoura à educação para a comunicação, assim como às práticas comunicativas

Media and Communication

This book chapter discusses media and communication. As core features of humanity, communication and media clearly predate academic disciplines. They are in this sense non-disciplinary. Yet, they have for centuries been the subject of inquiry by those concerned to understand and improve human correspondence. This chapter surveys the historical development and present form of multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary studies of media and communication

Core Blighty? How Journalists Define Themselves Through Metaphor

Journalism has long relied on certain core metaphors in order to express its claims to social and political usefulness. The deployment of metaphors to describe a practice that in contrast asserts its truth-telling and plain prose style is in itself interesting. Since metaphor acts as a powerful indicator of presuppositions it can be used to reify complex public discourses, reducing them to common-sense thinking. This paper will explore what metaphors have been used in association with journalism in the pages of the British Journalism Review since the closure of the News of the World. This publication was launched in 1989 in response to a previous crisis in public and professional confidence in journalism and has since then provided an intriguing insider dialogue on developments within the area. Do metaphorical articulations of the current role and image of journalism demonstrate an awareness among journalists of changes in its values or do they rather tend to reinforce more traditional attitudes to a practice under threat? Post-Leveson what can the patterning of such figurative language across articles by a wide range of prominent journalists in the UK tell us about the values and aspirations of journalists in a time when journalism is under intense scrutiny

Unpopular Culture: Ecological Dissonance and Sustainable Futures in Media-Induced Tourism

The article deconstructs media-induced tourist development’s relationship with “sustainability,” “ecology” and the “popular”. I highlight the interconnected, but often competing interpretations of “ecology” as interactions among technics (representational regimes), technological regimes and institutions (media, tourism), social agents (media/tourism experts, fan tourists and their hosts), and the natural and built environment in which these take place. Constitutive of contemporary economic and sociocultural complexities in which media-induced “popular cultures” are produced and consumed, these ecological landscapes are increasingly in conflict between and within themselves. Such conflicts destabilize “popular culture” as ritualized behavior or experiential domain, enmeshing it into populist reactions against tourists/guests/strangers

Information ethics in a complicated age

Conferences such as this are a priceless resource in a complicated age. It is a hopeful sign that the same academic unit sponsoring the Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems (Lancaster & Smith, in press) conference also organized this seminar on ethics. Professionals in information storage and transmission face a firestorm of issues at present, and there are many impacted levels on which a sophisticated library system operates today. Developing a library profession with integrity is akin to building a home in a hurricane: the roof can never be safely put in place given the whirlwind of demands and unending technological innovations. And while a nine-session, two-day conference can help to hammer out policy guidelines, get the ethical problems straight, and stimulate each other's moral imagination, the larger context within which we work is determined by the contours of the technological civilization sketched above. It is essential that professional ethics whether of librarians, journalists, engineers, doctors, or lawyers be integrated into the common morality. Information ethics will prosper to the degree professional ethics as a whole develops a substantive and generative framework. Information professionals work in a fortuitous area that represents the quintessence of several axial issues at present, and are in a golden position to contribute to the debates in social ethics generally. With praise to those who are lighting the proverbial candle rather than cursing the darkness, the author will describe the heavy clouds nonetheless trusting that those in ethics for the long haul will use the seminal work this week to help unravel a conundrum and a paradox which makes our task in applied ethics nearly intractable.published or submitted for publicatio