Rather they were concerned for the relatives of those killed. They are found not just in western Europe and North America, but in countries as diverse as Egypt, South Korea, Jamaica, Mali and Venezuela.1 Most are fairly brief documents that could be expressed in no more than a dozen or so sentences, though in common with the practice in other professions there is now a tendency to draw up longer codes—a good example from Britain is that recommended in the Calcutt Report,2 an amended version of which has been adopted by the Press Complaints Commission. Although the former sort of case is dealt with in some codes of conduct, it is hard to see how a code addressed to individual journalists could cover the latter adequately; for sometimes what may be found objectionable is not the mere presence of journalists, but there being a sizeable crowd of them waiting around. However, governments with a purely ‘market’ approach to communications are not the only ones with no interest in the free flow of information. The foundation for making the right decision starts with ethics classes in college. That government counter-terrorist tactics are merely policing operations is an essential aspect of this picture. 2 ibid. This again seems problematic in the case of journalism. Our national newspapers, like the Houses of Lords and Commons, are deeply conservative institutions. up for sale. But the peculiar ethical demands of political life mean that this protected area is smaller for politicians, and, furthermore, not very secure. All of which leads to the cliché born of cynicism that the extent of institutional secrecy is itself a secret. Class is central to the Page 3 issue. In Australia the code of the Australian Journalists’ Association, which was drawn up originally with the needs of the press and its readers in mind, has now been revised so that its clauses are applicable both to journalists working for newspapers and to those employed in the electronic media.5 In Britain the Code of Practice of the Broadcasting Standards Council is concerned with the whole range of broadcast programmes, but includes some substantial sections on news broadcasts. Presses within the market place are private estates in print, and the editor has rights akin to those of any manager of a private estate in land—to include and exclude access to the estate. cit., p. 14. ‘Editorial independence’ has not been recognised. Found insideThe ninth edition of Media Ethics: Issues and Cases has been updated to reflect the most pressing ethical issues in media. Second, and relatedly, the market is the best institutional arrangement for ensuring that the press can act as a check on government, as a ‘fourth estate’ that checks the powers of the other three. There is no reason why the press should feel inhibited in exposing such double standards. 3 The Code of Broadcast News Ethics of the Radio/Television News Directors Association, reproduced in C.Fink, Media Ethics: In the Newsroom and Beyond (New York, McGrawHill, 1988), pp. Examples are the giving of the identity of rape victims where Codes of conduct for journalists 55 (for example, in the United States) it is legal to do so, and the identifying of innocent relatives or friends of those convicted of crimes. Gender/sex harassment, including gender/sex violence, is a form of prohibited gender/sex discrimination. At a superficial level hermeneutics does ignore claims to privacy. The enforced dissemination of an official version of the facts, brought about by the suppression of other views, does run counter to the supposed role of the news media in a democratic society. Certain programmes were criticised for treating Argentine and British claims with the same weight. The Place of Crusading Journalism—Past and Present—in a Secretive Society (Second Guardian Lecture), Oxford, Nuffield College, 1991. Previously banned by injunction.) On the whole many correspondents have been indifferent to the official manipulation of truth in wartime. 274–5. It is the manner, not the fact, of active dissent that is held to exclude them from political life. NOTES 1 R.Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford, Blackwell, 1980), pp. Honesty, then, is a moral virtue and one which we all have an interest in promoting: its function is to preserve trust, and trust is a social necessity. The bounds of totality of text and society are not self-evident. For many journalists, whether and to what degree to report on private aspects of a person's life begins with that person's expectations of privacy. The press, rightly alarmed that neither the draconian nature of this intimidation nor the disastrous consequences of trying to enforce it would inhibit parliamentary action, has attempted what was probably intended all along: to behave better. It follows that those who challenge the claims of a given State to administer the government of a territory will take issue with any categorisation of their acts and speech as merely private. Get out, get back to Dahran.’ For many reporters ‘the privileges of the pool and the military rules attached to it were more important than the right of a journalist to do his job’.36 For the war correspondent ‘being there’ is as important as reporting the truth of events. Quite apart from its practical impact, its symbolic denunciatory aspect provides powerful ideological reinforcement. By the ‘public interest’ the Home Secretary must have in mind the national interest, an interest in preserving British rule in Northern Ireland which is challenged by the IRA. Christians, Clifford G. and Covert, Catherine L., Teaching Ethics in Journalism Education, New York, Hastings Center, 1980. In this post, we are going to highlight the critical issues involved, their reasons, and their outcomes. 23 ibid. Ethical issues journalism and the media 46 4 Hansard, House of Commons, 147 H.C.Debs, col. 1082 (22 February 1989). The event is but a part of the social totality. Students in the E.W. The first is that the media act as a watch-dog on government. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Weighing the benefits and disbenefits of such policies along utilitarian lines is, however, notoriously difficult and uncertain. Furthermore, resources are limited, and the press has more important tasks than to concern itself with senseless trivialities—among which, incidentally, I should include most of the activities of royalty. That argument attempts to identify certain illegitimate restrictions on the news media. Its value is recognised by its being entrenched in international codes and conventions. Unfortunately there are few examples in the world today of the press matching up to this ideal image, part of which is to scrutinise the exercise of power and also, of course, at the same time to respect privacy—where it is due. Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News, London, Routledge, 1976. 21 ibid., p. xvi. For the existence of proState terrorist groups is itself an indication of the extent of the threat to the status quo from Nationalist terrorism which the Government is anxious to under-play. David Burnet is a lecturer in the Cardiff Law School, University of Wales College of Cardiff. 8; and John Pilger, Heroes (London, Jonathan Cape, 1986), ch. For example, journalists work in a competitive environment. Journalism and the market for news take place within a wider cultural, political and social context. The interpretation of an event may involve other disputants, and hence further horizons. 5 Attorney General v. The Observer Ltd and Others and Attorney General v. Times Newspaper Ltd and Another, both in Times Law Report 22 December 1987. However, the argument for a free press in the sense of the freedom of journalists to control the contents of their newspaper provides no argument for a free market in the media or for the private estates in print that such a market presupposes. J.Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. This book examines the ethical concepts which lie at the heart of journalism, including freedom, democracy, truth, objectivity, honesty and privacy. Malcolm, Janet, The Journalist and the Murderer, London, Bloomsbury, 1991. WHOM DOES A CODE BENEFIT? It is only the reporting of military operations themselves which might prejudice this. Although newspapers carry a great deal of material that is not news, it is merely those parts of them that do convey news, and that involve the work of reporters, which are currently the subject of press codes of conduct. The knockon effect of their suppression would be, however, to deprive voters of information relevant to their assessment of the facts, for while the policy opinions themselves might not be able to affect their choice, that others hold them might well do so. Enduring issues in journalism ethics . And in any case, as we have just seen, those who enter the debate supporting acts of violence need not be threatening it: they may enter the debate seeking a peaceful, negotiated end to it. In practice ‘editorial independence’ may be largely limited to day-to-day matters of style, content and the editorial budget, rather than ‘strategic’ decisions on political alignment or major issues, which are usually settled by the proprietor. Journalists are professional people, trying to work within a code of professional ethics. It is to maintain the impression— which may be illusory—that the life of citizens continues more or less normally. This chapter from The News Manual explains why confidential sources are an important component of journalism and the ethical issues journalists may face after promising confidentiality. Just because we do not intend or expect to be caught out lying, we are less likely to judge reliably. SOURCES Many of those who provide information for reporters are quite happy to be identified publicly, for example, if they are acting as official spokespersons or if they happen to be chance witnesses to some disaster. A situation analogous to the terrorist case arises in open war. However, this approach poses problems for those who want a full democratic debate on the issues. Cline, Victor B. It follows from this that it makes sense to talk about a set of shared values to which journalists can appeal and—to return to the topic of the preceding section—such an appeal might be made to defend editorial independence. This Handbook encapsulates the intellectual history of mass media ethics over the past twenty-five years. Chapters serve as a summary of existing research and thinking in the field, as well as setting agenda items for future research. While modern societies may not be homogeneous, there are cultural and political boundaries within which most of the media operate. While Gadamer’s hermeneutics emphasises the importance of the prejudices that constitute all horizons of interpretation, he also raises the possibility of the misunderstanding of a text. Objectivity, bias and truth 83 Chapter 8 Objectivity, bias and truth Andrew Edgar It may be suggested that certain issues within the ethics of journalism can be explicated through an approach grounded in hermeneutics. Broadcasting is subject to a number of statutory licensing and regulating bodies, including the Independent Television Commission, the Radio Authority, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Council. Lack of censorship led to more self-censorship among correspondents. 12 Cited in Jenkins, ibid., p. 129. In the case of lying, of course, it being essentially intentional deception, only the former type of excuse is possible. Only where performance in private life is relevant to performance in public life is private life a proper object of concern or investigation. The distinctiveness of the locutionary content of an action is not simply that it can be identified and re-identified through an action verb.9 Rather, the action does not exist as action prior to its propositional formulation. What concerns us here is the specific relation between the journalist’s role as an impartial reporter of views and a government’s restrictions, imposed in the national interest, on the reporting of some views—in the case of the Broadcasting Ban by preventing broadcasts of their holders’ voices. 8 There are of course a number of replies that might be made to the line of argument thus developed. It reflects an assumption that is common in discussion of the market—that there exist just two feasible systems of information distribution: a centralised state-dominated system, or a decentralised marketled system. 40 Thomas Glasser, ‘Objectivity Precludes Responsibility’, in Ray Eldon Hiebert and Carol Reuss (eds), Impact of Mass Media (London, Longman, 1985), pp. In this instance there is an additional problem, namely that the success or otherwise of the policy, when it is implemented, in conducing to the public good is something that only government can be in a position to judge, since it alone has access to the necessary information of which others are deprived precisely by the operation of the policy. He was duly fired, though for endangering the company’s relationship with the government rather than for a blatant infringement of the convention covering the publisher-editor relationship. This is less clearly covered by the main British and US codes which all talk of ‘protecting confidential sources’, but in the Australian Journalists’ Association code the requirement is to ‘respect all confidences received in the cause of their calling’.13 Politicians sometimes give reporters minor information ‘on the record’, and then demand an undertaking that the rest of what they say should be treated as ‘off the record’, i.e., confidentially. And media ethics should borrow from medical ethics and insist on the consent being informed. The model of the Fleet Street press baron was established no later than the years immediately after the First World War. Codes of conduct are Usually not expressly published, but are issued to members of the organisation concerned, and to other interested parties on request. Privacy, publicity and politics 63 There are well-known dangers of building a moral evaluation into a definition: it begs too many questions. Is it true, as has been claimed in the House of Commons, that ‘when one decides to become a public figure one gives up in some way a little of one’s right to privacy’?12 This suggestion could be criticised from both sides, (a) No, one does not give up even a little of one’s right to privacy, (b) No, one gives up more than a little; one gives up a lot, or even the lot. Ward (Editor) Global Media Ethics is the first comprehensive cross-cultural exploration of the conceptual and practical issues facing media ethics in a global world. Our mission is to help you make your voice independent with our authentic and unbiased written contents added with pleasant reading experience. A by-product of the things that happen in peacetime 1945 most of the fighting of... Than others, it reflects the fact is, though, that you are likely to judge and.. Attacks against the BBC in particular that of its addressees matters that may question the status quo being informed explicit! 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