In this week’s lecture we looked at ethics in communication,
journalism and public relations. As was mentioned in the lecture not a lot of
people associate journalism with ethics; however this isn’t exactly the case. Journalists
do have a code of ethics that they are meant to follow, and in this lecture we
examined the dilemmas we have in public communications as journalists and the
three main ethics theories and codes that journalists follow.
Firstly, we looked at posters, ads and TV commercials, some
of which were banned from being broadcasted, and we were asked to think about
if they were ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. And if we did view them as ‘wrong’, why do our
personal morals come to that conclusion? For the most part I didn’t find any of
the commercials we were shown as particularly offensive, for example the Lynx or Fernwood advertisements. This may be due to the generation I’ve
grown up in, swear words and the like are usually fairly accepted amongst my
generation, sexual jokes crop up often etc. Most of these things appearing on
social networking sites such as Facebook.
A meme page on Facebook can make “offensive”
remarks or pictures and if one person complains in a comment, the comments it receives
in return are usually “don’t complain, no one said you had to like this page”
or something along those lines. Perhaps this is because people can often remain
anonymous through the internet and feel much safer in joining in on an argument
and expressing their own offensive/racist/sexist etc. views.
So how do we know what is ethical and what isn’t? Next we
discussed sorting stories into two baskets: the right and the wrong. How do we
analyse this? How do we base our decisions on what we do? I know for me,
personally, my biggest influences in life come from my upbringing, what my
family has taught me over the years as well as the friends I surrounded myself
with through school. In reality though there is a very fine line between what
should and shouldn’t be published in journalism, but there are rules, three
main theories that journalists follow when deciding on publishing a story or
not.
Deontology
If you follow the required rules,
principles and duties then what you are doing is seen as ethical. There are
many ethical theories under this framework, one of the most recognised being ‘Divine
Command’. In this theory, if you are obeying rules/regulations handed down from
a deity then you are ethically correct, e.g. Christians upholding 10
Commandments. All of the ethical codes in this context are created for specific
professions and situations.
Consequentialism
This involves the idea that an action is
ethical if it results in a 'good' or 'right' outcome. The ‘Utilitarianism
Theory’ by Jeremy Bentham is a good example of this theory as it states that
the action which brings the greatest good for the largest number is the ‘right’
or ‘correct’ action. However, this causes problems with the rights of minority
groups.
Virtue
This theory is about the person that you are.
What you value and believe. This theory
says that ‘goodness’ can be turned into happiness. In journalism, be too rash
and you could insult someone. If you are too cowardly to properly interview
someone, you could miss out of the truth, misinforming the public.
Overall, I’ve found this lecture gave me mixed feelings;
there are times when discussing ethics where I do find myself getting
incredibly bored. Other times in the lecture though I did find myself really
thinking about everything I was hearing. How much of my own morals is influenced
by my family and friends and how much of it is completely me and my instincts? When
it comes to a time when I have to do a story that may involve some horrific
incident, will I be able to go through with the report? What’s my limit? Will I
have to ignore some of my own morals to complete a story? Am I going to be able
to do that?
There really is so much for me to think about now. Ethics is
such a broad, globally known thing that is so important, I wouldn’t want to get
it wrong and receive criticism worldwide for example.
-Laura
13/09/12
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