The Ethical Journalist. Gene Foreman
are unknown or ambiguous. Since many actions are likely to benefit some people at the expense of others, the decision maker must prioritize competing moral claims and must be proficient at predicting the likely consequences of various choices. 19
With practice, you will be more confident and consistent in your decision‐making.
This does not mean that you will not make mistakes. Everyone does.
“We need to acknowledge the mistakes, figure out how and why mistakes are made, and then try to do better,” ethics scholars Deni Elliott and Paul Martin Lester have written. In their view, professionals who take ethics seriously will “stay conscious of the power that they have and the responsibility that they have to use that power judiciously.” They will treat people fairly, with respect and compassion; they will keep an open mind to alternatives. 20
Elliott and Lester suggested a final check. If you think you have made your decision in a rational way, would you be willing to allow your decision process to be published on the front page or run in the first news segment on television? 21 If you wince at that prospect, you ought to think again.
Notes
1 1 Michael Miner, “Pioneer Press aims at foot, fires,” Chicago Reader, Sept. 5, 2003, and “Yes, Virginia, some people still care about ethics,” Chicago Reader, May 7, 2004.
2 2 Eric Herman, “Paper sales inflated up to 50,000 a day,” Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 6, 2004, and Jacques Steinberg, “Sun-Times managers said to defraud advertisers,” The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2004.
3 3 Michael Josephson, “Definitions in ethics,” unpublished paper (2001). The paper is available on this textbook’s website.
4 4 Keith Woods, Oweida Lecture in Journalism Ethics, Pennsylvania State University, Apr. 11, 2006.
5 5 Louis A. Day, Ethics in Media Communications: Cases and Controversies, 5th edn. (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2006), 5.
6 6 Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 284.
7 7 Gerald A. LaRue, “Ancient ethics,” in Peter Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 32.
8 8 Elaine E. Englehardt and Ralph D. Barney, Media and Ethics: Principles for Moral Decisions (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2002), 25.
9 9 Day, Ethics in Media Communications, 3.
10 10 Rushworth M. Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living (New York: HarperCollins,1995), 159.
11 11 Michael Josephson, Making Ethical Decisions (Los Angeles: Josephson Institute, 2002), 5.
12 12 This definition of civil disobedience appears in Day, Ethics in Media Communications, 34.
13 13 Ibid., 15–16.
14 14 Josephson, “Definitions in ethics”.
15 15 Josephson, Making Ethical Decisions, 4.
16 16 Michael Josephson, Becoming an Exemplary Police Officer (Los Angeles: Josephson Institute, 2007), 21. Although the book was written for police officers, it offers Josephson’s thinking on ethics in a general sense. (The paper is available in the Student Resources section of the website).
17 17 Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays in Moral Development, vol. 1, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 12.
18 18 Michael Josephson, Ethical Issues and Opportunities in Journalism (Marina del Rey, CA: Josephson Institute, 1991), 26.
19 19 Michael Josephson, unpublished paper on ethical decision–making (2001).
20 20 Deni Elliott and Paul Martin Lester, “Taking ethics seriously: to err is human,” News Photographer, May 2004.
21 21 Ibid.
3 The News Media’s Role in Society The profession has matured and accepted social responsibility.
Covering the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, journalists were driven by a professional instinct to provide reliable information about the unknown.
Terraxplorer/E+/Getty Images.
Learning Goals
This chapter will help you understand:
journalism’s purpose and its guiding principles;
the meaning of the term social responsibility;
how journalism was practiced in an earlier era, and the ethical awakening that began in the mid-1970s;
the reasons for this period of reform; and
how today’s practice of journalism reflects decades of rising professionalism.
IN THE HORROR of September 11, 2001, many journalists risked their lives to do their jobs. Through the day, television, radio, and internet news sites reassured Americans by providing reliable information about the stunning events at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Wire services sent bulletin after bulletin around the world.
The next day, newspapers added context and analysis. Newsmagazines published special editions. “In those early defining moments of mid‐September, the nation’s news media conducted themselves with the courage, honesty, grace, and dedication a free society deserves,” Gloria Cooper wrote in Columbia Journalism Review. 1
There were casualties. A photojournalist and six television transmission engineers were killed at the World Trade Center.
“On this day of unimaginable fear and terror, journalists acted on instinct,” Cathy Trost and Alicia C. Shepard wrote in a 2002 oral history that documents the heroism: “They commandeered taxis, hitched rides with strangers, rode bikes, walked miles, even sprinted to crash sites.” Appropriately, the book’s title is Running Toward Danger.
It wasn’t competition that motivated them – cable and broadcast networks, for example, shared video that day. It wasn’t profit – the networks aired no commercials for 93 hours, and all news organizations broke their budgets to cover the story. As Trost and Shepard concluded, it could only be instinct that drove these journalists, an ingrained conviction that their profession is a high calling to public service. 2
In The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote about a craving for news that humans have had throughout history. They call it “the Awareness Instinct” – people’s need “to be aware of events beyond their direct experience.” Knowledge of the unknown, the authors wrote, gives people a sense of security. 3 Contemporary society needs reliable information to satisfy the Awareness Instinct, and it was especially in demand on September 11.
Journalism’s Guiding Principles
In 1997, Kovach and Rosenstiel began two years of interviews, forums, and surveys intended to define journalism’s purpose. There were clues in the ethics codes adopted by national journalism organizations. Those codes asserted that journalists serve the public and that they are dedicated to truth and fairness.
Beyond writing the codes, journalists had not spent much time analyzing what their guiding principles were. For one thing, they thought it was evident that they worked in the public interest and that the news they published or broadcast