Volume 19.2 (2004)
Special Issue: Media Ethics in Australia
Stakeholders Versus Shareholders: Journalism, Business, and Ethics
by Ian Richards, University of South Australia
Although the individual journalist is an essential unit of ethical agency, journalists are increasingly employees of large companies or corporations whose primary aim is to maximize returns to shareholders. Consequently, many, perhaps most, of the ethical dilemmas journalists face begin with the inherent conflict between the individual’s role as a journalist and his or her employer’s quest for profit. My underlying argument in this article is that this situation is not unique, that other fields are confronting similar dilemmas, and consequently, journalism may have much to learn from them. In the article I contend that business and journalism ethics, in particular, appear to have more in common that has generally been acknowledged and that the field of business ethics has yielded many concepts that appear to have relevance to journalism. In the article, I conclude that considering the insights offered by those who operate from the perspective of business ethics will facilitate analysis of the interface between individual journalists and the corporate forces that affect so many of them.
Good Character: Too Little, Too Late
by Neil Levy, University of Melbourne
The influence of virtue theory is spreading to the professions. I argue that we would do well to refrain from placing too much faith in the power of the virtues to guide working journalists. Rather than focus on the character of the journalist, we would do better to concentrate on institutional constraints on unethical conduct. I urge this position in the light of the critique of virtue ethics advanced, especially by Gilbert Harman (1999). Harman believed that the empirical findings of psychologists show that character-based approaches to ethics are useless. I suspect this rather overstates the case. Nevertheless, special features of journalism make virtue-centered approaches especially inappropriate, and we had best turn to alternative.
Empowerment as a Universal Ethic in Global Journalism
by Tom Brislin, University of Hawaii
Globalization has churned up in its wake a reevaluation of standards in numerous enterprises, including journalism. The search for a universal journalism ethics, however, has often ended with the attempt to import traditional and underlying Western “free press” values such as objectivity and an adversarial platform, forged in Enlightenment philosophy. This belief of the universal portability of Western values is reflected in the mixed results of several professional initiatives in the early and mid-1990s designed to both install and instill a First Amendment-based free press system in the newly independent former states of the Soviet Union. Scholars admonish us that modernization through globalization is not Westernization and warn us of the futility of attempting to fit indigenous values into a procrustean bed of Western economic or political design. Multiple models of citizen-press-government relationships grow legitimately out of indigenous value systems and are endurable within the forces of globalization. This does not mean the search for a universal journalism ethics should be abandoned to the morass of cultural relativism, but rather that a new starting point should be found and new focal points enumerated. Globalization has produced several major paradigm shifts in world societies, not the least of which is increasing degrees of autonomy of both the individual and the citizenry to encourage a wider participation in both the governing and economic process. This suggests that a new focal point of journalism ethics should be empowerment--the degree to which a society’s journalism ethics is designed to empower the citizenry for its own betterment rather than the degree to which it creates a passive audience of consumerism. In this study, I advance an ethic of empowerment that can both reflect the changes of globalization and respect indigenous value systems. I also argue that a principle structural measurement of this global ethic should be the degree of autonomy the journalist enjoys, within legal, cultural, and professional limits.
Australian Media Ethics Regime and Ethical Risk Management
by Charles Sampford, Griffith University in Australia; Robyn Lui, Griffith University in Australia
Media organizations are simultaneously key elements of an effective democracy and, for the most part, commercial entities seeking success in the market. They play an essential role in the formation of public opinion and the influence on personal choices. Yet most of them are commercial enterprises seeking readers or viewers, advertising, favorable regulatory decisions for their media, and other assets. This creates some intrinsic difficulties and produces some sharp tensions within media ethics. In this article, we examine such tensions--in theory and practice. We then consider the feasibility of introducing an ethics regime to the media industry--a regime that should be effective in a deregulated environment in protecting public interest and social responsibility. In the article, we also outline a rationale and a methodology for the institutionalization of an acceptable and workable media ethics regime that aims to protect the integrity of the industry in a future of undoubtedly increasing commercial pressure.
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