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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Emphasizing the intertwined concepts of freedom of the press and social responsibility, this is the first book to cover media ethics from a truly global perspective. Case studies on hot topics and issues of enduring importance in media studies are introduced and thoroughly analyzed, with particular focus on ones involving social media and public protest
- Written by two global media ethics experts with extensive teaching experience, this work covers the whole spectrum of media, from news, film, and television, to advertising, PR, and digital media
- End-of-chapter exercises, discussion questions, and commentary boxes from a global group of scholars reinforce student learning, engage readers, and offer diverse perspectives
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Seitenzahl: 693
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Contents
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction: Contexts for Ethical Decision-Making
Does the “Global Village” Imply a Global Media Ethics?
The Political-Economic Context of Global Media Ethics
The Cultural-Religious Context of Global Media Ethics
The Professional Context of Global Media Ethics
The Moral Context of Global Media Ethics
The Legal Context of Global Media Ethics
Economics, Acquisition, and Materialism in Global Media Ethics
Politics and Face-Saving in Global Media Ethics
Section Summary
Freedom of the Press
Social Responsibility
Social Responsibility in a Global Context
Social Responsibility and Technological Change
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 2: Philosophical Perspectives on Ethical Decision-Making: The Individualist Traditions
Introduction
Sources of Moral Action
Individualist Ethical Traditions
Case 2.1: Humanizing “Terrorists?”
Commentary on Case 2.1
Virtue Ethics
Case 2.2: Aliaa Maghda El-Mahdy
Commentary on Case 2.2
Conclusion: Reconciling Different Perspectives?
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 3: Philosophical Perspectives on Ethical Decision-Making: The Collectivist Traditions
Introduction
Communitarian Ethics
Buddhist/Shinto Ethics
Confucian Ethics
Feminist Ethics
Hindu Ethics
Ma'at
Ubuntu
Iwa
Cieng
Palaver
Case 3.1: Western Reportage of African Conflict
Commentary on Case 3.1
Differences in Religious Ethical Perspectives
Case 3.2: Hate Speech in Kenya
Commentary on Case 3.2
Case 3.3: The Media in the Chilcot Report
Commentary on Case 3.3
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 4: Ethics and Political Economy
Introduction
Defining Political Economy
Colonialism, Political Economy, and Ethics
International Political Economy of Media
The Right to Communicate
Case 4.1a: Licensing Journalists
Commentary on Case 4.1a
Case 4.1b: Secrecy Agreements in China
Commentary on Case 4.1b
Case 4.1c: Supporting Government Activities
Commentary on Case 4.1c
International Media Domination
Implications of Global Media Consolidation
Case 4.2a: Video Games and History
Commentary on Case 4.2a
Case 4.2b: Photoshop and Benetton
Commentary on Case 4.2b
Case 4.2c: Misrepresenting People for a Good Cause
Commentary on Case 4.2c
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 5: Boundaries on Civil Discourse
Introduction
Disinformation
Case 5.1: Thrive and Coverage of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence
Commentary on Case 5.1
Case 5.2: The Interview
Commentary on Case 5.2
Language and Presentation
Case 5.3: Graphic Content in the News
Commentary on Case 5.3
Case 5.4: Tourism Dispute in Hong Kong
Commentary on Case 5.4
Case 5.5: Racism in Bollywood
Commentary on Case 5.5
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Chapter 6: Advertising, Public Relations, and Materialism
Introduction
Advertising as a Post-Enlightenment Enterprise
The Growth of Global Advertising
Case 6.1: Skin Whitening Products in Asia
Commentary on Case 6.1
Case 6.2: Pharmaceuticals and Natural Remedies in Africa
Commentary on Case 6.2
Case 6.3: Is it Public Relations or is it Advertising?
Commentary on Case 6.3
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 7: Global Entertainment
Introduction
Case 7.1: The Nollywood Film
Commentary on Case 7.1
Case 7.2: Korean Comics and Films
Commentary on Case 7.2
Moral Reasoning and Play
Case 7.3: Video Games
Commentary on Case 7.3
Forbidden Knowledge?
Concluding Remarks
Discussion Questions
Chapter 8: Media and the Political Process
Introduction
Media and Public Discourse
Public Discourse Using the Internet
Case 8.1: Charlie Hebdo
Commentary on Case 8.1
Case 8.2: In the First Circle
Commentary on Case 8.2
Case 8.3: Death of a Social Media Celebrity in Pakistan
Commentary on Case 8.3
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 9: The Rule of Law
Introduction
Case 9:1: Aiding Terrorism
Commentary on Case 9.1
Case 9.2: Israeli Anti-Arab Politics
Commentary on Case 9.2
Case 9.3: Opposition Journalism in Uzbekistan
Commentary on Case 9.3
Discussion Questions
Chapter 10: Treasuring Persons, Protecting Institutions: The Protection of Minority Voices
Introduction
Media and Society
Double-Standards in Social Responsibility – Not All Are Equal in Media Reports
Leakers, Hackers, and Whistle-Blowers
The Tactic of Trolling
Case 10.1: Vulnerable People, Suicide, and the Internet
Commentary on Case 10.1
Case 10.2: The Characterization of Women
Commentary on Case 10.2
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 11: Religion and Social Responsibility
Introduction
Case 11.1: Al-Qaeda in France
Commentary on Case 11.1
Case 11.2: Sharia in Sudan
Commentary on Case 11.2
Case 11.3: The Syrian Civil War
Commentary on Case 11.3
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 12: War, Violence, and Media
Introduction
Why Cover Violence?
Case 12.1: Elections in Kenya
Commentary on Case 12.1
Case 12.2: Casual Talk and Public Discourse
Commentary on Case 12.2
Conclusion
Discussion Questions
Chapter 13: Truth, Conflict, Chronic Problems, and Media Attention
The Problem of the Truth
Case 13.1: Sexual Trafficking
Commentary on Case 13.1
Case 13.2: Truth and Reconciliation
Commentary on Case 13.2
Chronic Truths
Case 13.3: Chronic Poverty
Commentary on Case 13.3
Case 13.4: Achieving a Peaceful Planet
Commentary on Case 13.4
Conclusion: What Is To Be Done?
Discussion Questions
Notes
Chapter 14: Conclusion
Introduction
Case 14.1: Freedom vs. Responsibility
Commentary on Case 14.1
Case 14.2: Defamation by Corporation
Commentary on Case 14.2
Concluding Remarks
Discussion Questions
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1
Figure 2.1
Figure 3.1
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 5.1
Figure 5.2
Figure 6.1
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3
Figure 6.4
Figure 6.5
Figure 6.6
Figure 10.1
Figure 10.2
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Chapter 1
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Emphasizing the intertwined concepts of freedom of the press and social responsibility, World Media Ethics is the first book to cover media ethics from a truly global perspective. Written by two experts in global media ethics with extensive teaching experience, this work is a comprehensive introduction to ethical theory and practice, and covers the whole spectrum of media from news, film, and television to advertising, public relations, and digital media.
Case studies on hot topics and issues of enduring importance in media studies are introduced and thoroughly analyzed. The case studies are drawn from recent events worldwide, including the abduction of three Israeli settlers from the West Bank in 2014 (the idea of humanizing terrorists); the kidnapping of several hundred Nigerian girls by Boko Haram in 2014 (the influence of Western perspective on reporting international events); and licensing, secrecy agreements, and independence of the press in Asia (the relationship between journalists and governments).
End-of-chapter exercises, discussion questions, and commentary supplement the many specific questions put to students in the text itself, all designed as prompts to facilitate student application of ethical theories in real-life situations.
This work is a foundational resource for journalism students and professional journalists alike.
Robert S. Fortner is Professor of Communication and Media at Palm Beach Atlantic University, USA. He has published widely on international communication, global public diplomacy, the history of international media, media ethics, and media theory. Most recently, he has been the co-editor of The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory (two-volume set, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) and The Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics (two-volume set, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). He has extensive experience teaching, lecturing, and interacting with media practitioners in various countries around the world, from Moscow to Nairobi, and Abidjan to Ulan Bator.
P. Mark Fackler is Emeritus Professor of Communication at Calvin College, USA, and has written extensively on communication and journalism ethics. He is the co-author of Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning (10th edition, 2016), Ethics for Public Communication (2011), and Ethics and Evil in the Public Sphere (2010). He is the co-editor of The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory (two-volume set, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014) and The Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics (two-volume set, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). He has taught communication ethics in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, and publishes with African scholars on media ethics in that region.
World Media Ethics
Cases and Commentary
Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler
This edition first published 2018© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Preface
The genesis of this book was a course taught at the American University in Bulgaria in the fall of 2011. When Robert arrived on campus, the text for this course had already been ordered. It was one of the standard media ethics texts used in U.S. journalism and media programs. It included some case studies from outside the United States, but most were domestic. As the course progressed it became clear that the situation of most students enrolled was significantly different than in the United States, and the case studies were of limited value in those contexts.
Many of the students had already worked in media organizations as interns, some as part-time employees, some as volunteers. They began to bring their experiences to Robert for advice. One student had been an intern in a Moscow television station. She was expected to have sex with any foreign visitors to the station and her female supervisor, when she objected to that expectation, told her, “It's just sex. What's the big deal?” She left her internship. Another student thought there was a story in an encounter in a Sofia hospital where she had been told by a horrified visitor that there was a corpse in the women's toilet. Her idea was turned down by the editor who told her, “There's no story there. That happens everywhere.” When she followed up anyway, she discovered that this was a common practice because the hospital didn't want anyone pronounced dead to “wake up” in the morgue, so their bodies were left for some time in the toilets to make sure they were actually deceased. A third student was told she needed to be part of a sting operation targeting casinos that allowed underage children to gamble. She was asked to play the part of a child. She objected. So she was told to recruit an actual child. Again she objected, telling the producer that casinos were run by known mobsters, and playing such a role, or recruiting someone to do so, could put their lives in danger once the story aired. She was fired.
Many students came from countries, such as Georgia, Belarus, or Turkmenistan, that had strict controls over the press, and / or had media owners who cozied up to the political powers such that they could do what they liked, without consequence, or who were targeted by political elites for adverse reports and whose employees were often beaten up or jailed for stories. One student's mother had to flee Kyrgyzstan when her extended family was threatened as a result of her reporting on a labor strike that had been brutally put down by the military.
Using a text that emerged from an environment of independent ownership, professional commitments, and a guaranteed free press became increasingly problematic. Ethics in a “free” versus a corrupt, controlled, or amoral environment seemed to Robert a stretch too far. These students' experiences were merely one type of experience outside the zone of a free press. Experiences both Mark and Robert have had in other contexts, from Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia, culminated in the decision to write this book.
1Introduction: Contexts for Ethical Decision-Making
Ethics is not practiced in a vacuum. Choosing how to act occurs in particular contexts that exert various kinds of pressure on those making choices. So we will begin this book with attention to the various aspects of society and culture that affect the ethical choices made within them. Although we are presenting these as separate entities, it will become clear in the reading that they are so intertwined that it is difficult to speak of them separately. The value of doing so is to highlight them as important considerations. Once our initial analysis is complete, we will be able to show how various ethical perspectives relate to them, and then provide comments on how ethical decisions might reasonably be made within complex contexts.
Each of the following characteristics of societies and cultures forms a part of the overall context of moral choice. This differs not only from society to society, but from individual to individual. Some people in a society make choices based in large measure on religious commitments. Others are driven by the perceived demands of media technology or professions, and still others by ideological commitments. To fully understand the choices made, then, it is necessary to give some thought to how each of the following contexts may impact on them. We do not mean that ethics is relative, but that it is situational. People of goodwill may, within a given socio-cultural context, come to different decisions. Are all decisions equally ethical? We would say “no,” but to evaluate the ethics of choice it is useful to understand the context within which choices are made. Then we will have the basis for conversation as to whether a decision can be defended on ethical grounds.
Does the “Global Village” Imply a Global Media Ethics?
The first hurdle to overcome when thinking about global media ethics is the belief that a global village exists. It doesn't. There are markers of its existence, to be sure, but they are misleading, especially for those who see them from a Western perspective. Since the nineteenth century, the so-called century of progress, Western pundits and the popular media have touted the role of new communications technologies in “shrinking” the world, annihilating time and space, and allowing for universal connectivity for the world's peoples. The world wars of the twentieth century did little to dampen the enthusiasm, for global connection and expectations rose to new heights with the arrival of satellite communication, global media networks, and real-time reports from far-flung regions via, first, satellite telephony and then video feeds. The arrival and rapid spread of the internet continued the trend. The final burst of expectation (so far) was unleashed by the development of mobile smartphones using broadband systems and wireless capability. It seemed that all the barriers that had prevented global universal communication had been overcome by technological progress.
It is not difficult to find claims that the global village has arrived. The International Monetary Fund trumpeted its arrival in September 2012 (Mahbubani, 2012, p. 1). Kishore Mahbubani claimed the milestone that justified this claim was that teledensity had reached the point that people had “become interconnected at a level never seen before in history,” and that such technology (mobile telephones and the internet) had generated global convergence that, along with education, had improved human lives (Ibid.).
The problem with such claims is that they ignore more than they reveal. There is little doubt that connectivity among people is more widely distributed, and used in greater measure, than ever before. In 2014 the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that there were 6.9 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions around the world, nearly equal to the total population of the planet. However, somewhat fewer than three billion people had access to the internet, with access in developing countries reaching only 32% (ITU, 2014). The main reason for the difference is the much lower access to mobile broadband internet services in the developing world where wired infrastructure is not available.
Related to this difference in access to technology is the problem with seeing all connections as equally capable of accessing content. For instance, although the teledensity in the continent of Africa has increased several times over in the past decade, much of this development has provided only the barest connection to people. In Ivory Coast, for instance, 3G+ mobile coverage in 2014 was limited to 10 urban areas, and those that were connected to these systems, although they could access the internet, could see YouTube content at only 240p, the site's minimum resolution, while the more highly developed infrastructures in other countries allowed for 1040p HD (high-definition) connections. Rural areas of Ivory Coast were still without any broadband coverage at all, limiting use of mobile telephones to voice and SMS (text). On many of the islands in the Pacific, including those that are part of the Philippines and Indonesia, the only television available is through satellite delivery, and then only when generators are used to provide the power for connection. In mountainous areas, such as Nepal, the same situation applies and even radio is problematic since the most prevalent system employed is frequency modulation (VHF/FM), which uses only line of sight signals that are easily blocked by the terrain. The absence of a power grid also makes people dependent on expensive batteries that can only be replaced by trekking often long distances into towns on treacherous footpaths. Such circumstances make talk of a global village more of a fantasy than a reality.
Besides such access issues, many other obstacles continue to frustrate efforts to think of the world as a global village. People who have the good fortune to see films or television programs made in other countries, for instance, rarely see the reality of people's lives. Television does not thrive on careful documentaries of the lives of ordinary people living ordinary lives. Typically, actors portray others and, in so doing, interpret their scripts according to preconceptions that may have no firm foundation in the ordinary social, cultural, or economic lives of those they purport to represent. Many programs, regardless of source, are formulaic indigenized versions of programs that have attracted audiences in other countries. Often they become caricatures of the original, because the premise of the formula was culture-bound and those in the knock-off have altered their personas to qualify for the program. These two realities are “thin,” barely scratching the surface of authentic portrayal. Even “thicker” programs, such as carefully crafted documentary approaches, are the perceptions of single filmmakers of “the other”; few to none are actually produced by those indigenous to the community portrayed.
So, despite the growth of global telephony, wired and wireless internet services, and widespread distribution of cultural products, the claim of a global village is actually a chimera – at best less than half the world's population could be said to be within range of this ideal. But despite the lack of a single media environment – a truly global village – there are still good reasons to think of ethics in a global perspective. Increasingly citizen reporters, bloggers, tweeters, and YouTube video producers seek global audiences. From #BringBackOurGirls to propaganda and recruitment videos produced by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria),1 media producers – amateur and professional – are appealing both to political establishments and to the global public sphere. The same is true of those who parody terrorists in the Middle East in their own viral videos, some using music videos or Lego figures (Zahriyeh, 2015).
The Political-Economic Context of Global Media Ethics
Although there are various political and economic relationships that bind countries together through international conventions and organizations, free trade agreements, trade pacts, and technological connections via fiber optic undersea cables and satellites, such relationships are only operable so long as the countries so bound find them to be in their own best interests. They are all subject to the sovereignty claims of the signatories. All international conventions must be ratified by individual countries to have authority within them. Countries may take reservations when signing to indicate their intention not to be bound by certain aspects of them. Trade pacts can be abrogated, alliances broken, connections shut off at borders. They can also simply be broken when considered inconvenient. There is no universal method of enforcing such agreements or connections.
Political economy is concerned with the moral or ethical results of political and economic practices. Since these practices differ from one country to another, the contests that exist between efforts to reveal (practiced by media practitioners) and those to conceal or control, also differ. Several different political and economic configurations within countries affect both the context for ethical decisions and the fragmentation of the “global village.” Many countries have constitutional, regulatory, or philosophical commitments to free expression, although actual compliance with them is problematic. For instance, questions were raised in the United States as a result of the Obama administration's efforts to uncover leaks claimed to compromise national security, and in Britain as a result of both leaks and a hacking scandal that resulted in prosecutions of staff members of the now-closed News of the World. There have been official efforts to shut down Twitter in Turkey, China has restricted websites that raised moral issues by publishing pornographic images (including bare-breasted female anime characters), and in India the court found that the publication of an academic book (available in other countries for some time) in Hindi could foment religious unrest. In Fiji two journalists received death threats for their reports about a cancelled live television debate between the leading contenders for the post of prime minister. Iran and Russia have been developing their own internet that restricts access to connections outside their own countries and China has established the so-called “Great Firewall” to accomplish the same ends.
In addition, conflicts in various countries have led not only to arrests of journalists and bloggers, but also to denials of entry and manhunts of Russian journalists in Ukraine; expulsion and denial of entry to journalists in Yemen; prosecution of Al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt as terrorists; murders of journalists in Pakistan by Taliban factions (as well as expulsion of Indian journalists) and in the Philippines by Marxist-inspired separatists; street protests against restrictions on journalists in Venezuela; and rewritten laws governing expression in Kenya, Russia, and Libya (although overturned by the Libyan Supreme Court), among many other happenings. Many journalists, videographers, photojournalists, and filmmakers have also died covering the Syrian, Sudanese, and Congolese civil wars, in the Palestinian territories, and in ongoing sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many others have found themselves kidnapped or “detained.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), for instance, lists 1,054 journalists killed since 1992 (617 of them “with impunity”), and 211 journalists in prison in 2013 (cpj.org). And in Europe a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the European Initiative for Media Pluralism began registering in different countries in the effort to collect signatures to create a new European Commission directive to fight against media monopoly, seeking to “enshrine the severance of ties between media, business and politics in the different media states in a lawful manner on an EU [European Union] level” (Novinite.com, 2014). All of these realities influence the perceived relevance and practice of ethics by media practitioners.
The Cultural-Religious Context of Global Media Ethics
The religious fragmentation of the planet is well documented, but even the division of religion into Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Shinto, or “traditional” groups fails to capture the differences that actually exist. There are many variations within each of these groups, some so severe that it is sometimes difficult to see them as part of the same tradition. In addition to the obvious divisions, say between Catholics and Protestants, or Shia and Sunni Muslims, there are many other subgroups and “heretical” sects that could be identified. There are also humanists, non-believers, cultural adherents (or nominal believers), and those who say they are spiritual but not religious. The implication of this fragmentation is that “religious” bases for moral choice abound. Morality is a broad concept. It is, as Bernard Gert defined it, “an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, and has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal” (quoted in “The definition of morality,” 2011). This generic definition of the term does not suggest where any individual's sense of morality is grounded. For the billions of people on the planet who adhere to a religious tradition, however, there is a connection between their faith's requirements for behavior and its adherents' sense of morality. Although not all religions have scriptures (or holy books), all do have parents and teachers (including priests, imams, and gurus, among others) who pass along moral prescriptions to those who are either born into, or choose to follow, the tradition. As Paul Bloom (2012, p. 184) puts it: “Through holy texts and the proclamations of authority figures, religions make moral claims about abortion, homosexuality, duties to the poor, charity, masturbation, just war, and so on. People believe these claims because, implicitly or explicitly, they trust the sources. They accept them on faith.”
Of course, the requirements of each faith differ, sometimes profoundly, from each other. What one faith considers a necessary moral requirement, another doesn't deal with at all. Despite the clear relationship between Judaism and Christianity, for instance, the moral expectations for the treatment of debt, or the appropriate response to insult, differ. And, as suggested above, those within a particular tradition can have quite different ideas about abortion, capital punishment, or the treatment of the poor. Nevertheless, religion remains an important source of moral thought among the world's religious people.
Not only are people divided by religious commitments, there are also cultural divides to consider. Cultural divides, whether defined by tribe, clan, ethnicity, race, or visions of history, can even trump common moral commitments within religious traditions. Christians in Rwanda were both victims and perpetrators in the 1994 genocide. Sunni Muslims kill Shia Muslims in Iraq. Israeli Jews disagree profoundly about what to do to gain peace in the Middle East. Hindus judge one another more on the basis of caste than common faith. It sometimes seems too easy to ignore religious proscriptions on behavior when acting in response to propaganda or to historical inequities or atrocities. Death is not necessarily a function of hatred between nation-states. Robert Kaplan (1996, p. 8) reminds us that “of the eighty wars since 1945, only twenty-eight have taken the traditional form of fighting between regular armies of two or more states. Forty-six were civil wars or guerrilla insurgencies.…The fighting in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, and elsewhere suggested that this anarchic trend was proliferating.”
The Professional Context of Global Media Ethics
Media practitioners function in quite different professional contexts around the globe. In some countries, and notably in the United States, there are no requirements of any kind before a person can work in the media, including journalism. Requiring any education, credentials, examination, registration, or endorsement is seen as anathema to the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of a free press (with the press including all forms of media work). However, in many cases press credentials issued by a government or other agency (such as a local police force or organizing committee) are required for access to particular events or venues.
Other countries, however, do require some basic qualifications, especially for journalists. In Brazil, for instance, practicing as a journalist required a university degree in journalism and registration with the Labor Ministry from 1969 until the Supreme Court of Brazil abolished it in 2009 (see Lago and Fernandez, 2011). Nine other Latin American countries continue to have similar requirements (Kirtley, 2010). In Italy a journalist must have a university degree, pass an entrance examination given by the professional Order of Journalists, and be a member of the Order. In France the National Union of Journalists recommends that would-be journalists attend a certified university program in journalism, although it is possible to enter the profession without such a degree. It is more difficult, however, absent the degree, to be employed at more prestigious media organizations. In Portugal, there are no university degree requirements, but – practically speaking – anyone who desires employment as a journalist would do well to have one (Fidalgo, 2008).
“In a small number of countries,” according to Article 19 (an international free expression monitoring and advocacy organization), “the law provides for the possibility of temporarily, or even permanently, stripping an individual of the right to practice journalism or other media professions.” Since licensing, per se, is impermissible under international law when exercised by a government authority, this “power is exercised by courts as a sanction in criminal proceedings.” Several Kyrgyz journalists “were barred from practicing journalism for 18 months” when they were convicted of libeling the director of a state-owned gold-mining company in 1997 (Article 19, n.d.).
In Timor-Leste veteran journalist José Belo protested a new media law that he warned would signal the death of Timorese journalists' spirits due to its restrictions on who could or could not operate as a journalist, stipulations on information access, and government control of the regulating press council body (Robie, 2014). And in China, before any trial determined guilt or innocence, accused journalists were required, by mid-2014, to confess their “crime” on national television:
For the second time in a week, a Chinese journalist…has appeared on China's state-owned broadcaster, confessing to alleged crimes. “I have made up things that are not facts,” said…Xiang Nanfu, a frequent freelance contributor to New York-based Chinese language website Boxun.com. “My behavior has had a very bad impact. I realize that I have smeared the ruling party and the government.”
(Roberts, 2014)
Practicing media work, in other words, occurs in a variety of professional contexts – some defined by unions, some by court mandate, some by censorship, some by law, some by educational requirements, and some by unspecified, but widely known, expectations.
The Moral Context of Global Media Ethics
It is a mistake to assume that the basic moral commitments in one society are identical to those in another. Although there are some basic universals, such as prohibitions against taking the life of another, respecting the other's human dignity, not harming the innocent, and truth-telling, adhering merely to these four proto-norms, as Clifford G. Christians and Michael Traber (1997) call them, provides only a “thin” ethics. What we mean is that, although these four commitments are essential, they are also of limited use in making moral choices in media work. By definition universal values are applicable across all societies and cultures. They also apply equally to those in media as much, or as little, as they apply to other professionals, tradesmen, laborers, or stay-at-home mothers. They are not unique to media workers who are unlikely to be in situations where they would have to choose whether or not to take a life or harm the innocent, if such demands are interpreted in the context of people's usual material existence. Media workers, however, especially those in the entertainment or culture industries, may face these issues in productions where violence is part of the story, calling for symbolic deaths, torture, rape, or beatings, or where people are symbolically dehumanized, but these choices are on a different order than those made in everyday life. They are depictions – sometimes justified, sometimes not – but the violence or dehumanization affects characters portrayed by actors, not actual people.
We find it useful to start with universals, however, as they are foundational. They are necessary, but also insufficient, for the moral character of societies is not entirely – perhaps not even primarily – universal. For instance, U.S. television programs contain much more violence than those in most of the rest of the world. This violence, too, is more explicit than the artful portrayals in Asia or those that are left to the imagination by European television producers. European television, however, does not shy away from scenes with fully nude actors, a production choice that is simply not made in U.S. or Asian programs (at least on readily accessible on-air channels). In Russia and several African countries, and most notably in Uganda, the media must tread lightly when reporting, or including in entertainment programs, information that would be considered homosexual “propaganda” or advocacy – again on moral grounds. In some countries, too, notably those with large populations of Muslims, not only is nudity prohibited, but also any programming that is considered blasphemous, something not avoided in U.S. or European programs. In China, media products, including social media, are prohibited from questioning the legitimacy of the Communist Party – often for “moral” reasons. It is difficult in some cases for Chinese journalists to pursue stories of corrupt officials.
For example, Xinran (2002, chapter 1) was a presenter for the Chinese state radio service and received a letter from a young village boy pleading for intercession for a young girl who had been purchased by an old man to be his wife. The boy suspected she had been kidnapped. Xinran contacted the local police and one policeman reluctantly agreed to help, although he told her, “‘In the countryside the heavens are high and the emperor is far away.’ In his opinion the law had no power there.” She went to the village with the police, who freed the girl whose family lived 22 hours away by train. They had been searching frantically for her. “I received no praise for the rescue of this girl, only criticism for ‘moving the troops about and stirring up the people’ and wasting the radio station's time and money.…Just what was a woman's life worth in China?” In many countries this would be considered a moral issue – but not by officials in China.
In 2015 in Saudi Arabia a cartoonist was sentenced to death for apostasy, the result of filming himself tearing up a copy of the Koran and hitting it with his shoe (a sign of disrespect in the Middle East) (Spencer, 2015). This would be seen in many countries as freedom of expression, even if distasteful, but in most Middle Eastern countries such behavior is punishable by execution.
It also seems clear, despite the existence of universals, that a people – defined by tribe, clan, ethnicity, or race – can find ways to avoid, at least in their own minds, the approbation that might otherwise attach to them for immoral actions. Serbs found ways to legitimize ethnic cleansing, radical Hutus to legitimize genocide (see Fortner, 2006). As Martha Minow (1998, p. 11) put it: “At a societal level, as the recent conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda have only too vividly demonstrated, memories, or propaganda-inspired illusions about memories, can motivate people who otherwise live peaceably to engage in torture and slaughter of neighbors identified as members of groups who committed past atrocities. The results can be devastating, escalating intergroup violence. Mass killings are the fruit of revenge for perceived past harms.” More recently, Dinka and Nuer tribesmen in South Sudan, Syrians, Ukrainians (including ethnic Russians), and Egyptians have engaged in mass violence against countrymen using a variety of justifications. The list of atrocities continues to lengthen. Despite universals, moral contexts vary and can justify to perpetrators sometimes unspeakable atrocities.
The Legal Context of Global Media Ethics
Some countries operate under a clearly defined rule of law. This means, as the World Justice Project puts it, that (1) the government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities are accountable under the law, (2) laws are clear, publicized, stable, just, and are applied evenly to protect fundamental rights, (3) the process by which laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient, and (4) justice is delivered in a timely manner by competent, ethical, and independent representatives who are of sufficient number and adequately funded, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve (“What is the Rule of Law?,” 2014). In other words, all persons or institutions are subject to laws equally applied within a society, regardless of status, or economic/political significance. The principle of rule of law is “at the heart of the United Nations' mission,” embedded in its Charter (“United Nations and the Rule of Law,” 2014).
The World Justice Project has ranked 99 countries, based on nine factors and 47 sub-factors, using surveys provided both to local experts and to general publics, on the rule of law. Its analysis concluded that the rule of law was strongest in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands, and weakest in Cameroon, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. In general, sub-Saharan African countries fared worst, and European countries, New Zealand, and Australia fared best, as groups. Some representative rankings include: Canada 11, Japan 12, South Korea 14, Hong Kong 16, the United States 19, Malaysia 35, South Africa 40, Indonesia 46, Mongolia 51, Vietnam 65, India 66, Egypt 74, China 76, Russia 80, Kenya 86, Myanmar 89, and Bangladesh 92 (“WJP Rule of Law Index,” 2014).
Respect for and application of the rule of law by all parties in society – including government and corporate leaders, media professionals, educators, and other professionals – provides a basic platform for resolution of disputes, justice for both criminals and victims, and a foundation for civility and trust. Ethical practices are enabled by such commitments and practices.
But ethics and law are not identical. Laws can be just but still immoral. As the American jurist Thane Rosenbaum (2005, p. 22) puts it: “what passes for justice in America is often immoral justice – a resolution that makes sense legally and can be explained and justified by judges, lawyers, and law professors simply by conforming, in a very formalistic sense, to precedent and procedure, but ultimately feels emotionally and morally wrong to everyone else. Justice that doesn't feel just, but instead feels like a colossal misnomer.” Expanding on this, he provides this example: “But to stand apart from the crowd, and stand up for friends and neighbors – even if they are strangers – to oppose governmental authority when it lacks moral authority, to rescue fellow men from danger, may be the right thing to do morally, even if it's not reasonable to do so” (Ibid., p. 29).
Traditional practices can warp the application of law, or even overwhelm it. In West Africa, for instance, the traditional practice of “dash” (gift-giving for services rendered) provides incentive for people to rise to power and to rain gifts on those who assisted in their rise: “The bigger the man, the bigger the ‘dash’ for the favour received. The ‘Big Man’ became an accepted feature of West African life, a patron fostering his followers by his fame and fortune” (Meredith, 2005, p. 172). Since the loyalist followers tended to be from the Big Man's own tribe or clan, this tradition made it seem acceptable, in many cases, for him to shower largesse within these circles – as well as to engender resentment from other tribes or clans that would then rebel, leading to decades of instability.
Operationally, such a tradition meant that certain people would be favored for government contracts, or licenses to operate mining, import-export, or agricultural enterprises (cocoa or sugar cane growers, etc.), leading to narrow concentrations of wealth (see Ibid., pp. 278, 686). This wealth could either be legitimate or ill-gotten, depending on the particulars.
Such practices are not restricted to West Africa. Payments for “services rendered” exists in many parts of the world in the form of purchased news stories or favorable coverage in otherwise legitimate coverage. One study of the situation in India (Sharma, 2013, p. 9) linked the practice of purchasing positive media coverage with a rising level of organized and institutionalized corruption. Sanjay Kumar wrote about this problem as long ago as 2010:
Following last year's elections in Maharashtra, allegations surfaced that the local media had taken thousands of dollars from politicians in return for publishing favourable news stories about them. And, in a panel discussion at the Ramnath Goenka Awards [India's awards for excellence in journalism], executives from India's leading media accepted the sad truth that such media payments are indeed commonplace today. Arun Shourie, an eminent journalist and politician from the right wing Bhartiya Janata Party, accused the media of adopting the “politics of silence” over this issue, arguing that broadly speaking, there was little internal debate or introspection among the nation's media houses. According to Star News CEO Uday Shankar, the main reason is (perhaps not surprisingly) the significant amounts of money that media houses are earning from paid news.
(Kumar, 2010)
In this case the initiation of such paid relationships came from the press itself, not from those seeking favorable coverage.
Julie Moos (2010), writing for the Poynter Institute about the situation in the United States, says that “journalism organizations that once refused to pay sources now write them large checks for access to information. They label these payments ‘licensing fees,’ and in return they receive photos, video, emails, or cell phone records. In the process, they lose credibility and simultaneously strengthen the market for checkbook journalism.” Quoting Paul Friedman, then senior vice president at CBS News, she continued: “If we all drew a line again, maybe we could stop this…But that's probably hopelessly naïve. It's out of the bottle.”
Economics, Acquisition, and Materialism in Global Media Ethics
Although many of the media systems set up around the world during the twentieth century followed the public service model pioneered by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), most media in the twenty-first century have adopted a commercial model with their activities directed by commercial considerations – achieving a profit. However, profitable media organizations have also become more difficult to sustain. This has resulted, sometimes, in successful non-media entrepreneurs, such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Pierre Omidyar of eBay, investing in media properties or in the continuing development of multinational media conglomerates, such as News Corporation (owned by Rupert Murdoch). In 2001 seven multinational corporations dominated the global media market. These were Disney, AOL-Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann (McChesney, 2001). By 2015, however, indicative of the rapid changes in media-related technologies, the world's largest media corporations included Comcast, Disney, 21st Century Fox, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV (later purchased by AT&T), WPP (a UK-based company), CBS, Viacom, and BSkyB (Le, 2015). All of them operate on a for-profit basis.
What this means is that, for them to flourish, they must either charge for access to media material, or they must sell access to audiences to their advertisers, or both. The result is an increasingly materialist alternative to traditional culture and lives increasingly dominated by personal acquisition of goods. The consequences?
Using statistics and psychological tests, researchers are nailing down what clerics and philosophers have preached for millennia: Materialism is bad for the soul. Only, in the new formulation, materialism is bad for your emotional well-being. In recent years, researchers have reported an ever-growing list of downsides to getting and spending – damage to relationships and self-esteem, a heightened risk of depression and anxiety, less time for what the research indicates truly makes people happy, like family, friendship and engaging work. And maybe even headaches. “Consumer culture is continually bombarding us with the message that materialism will make us happy,” said Tim Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College in Illinois who has led some of the recent work. “What this research shows is that that's not true.”
(Goldberg, 2006)
The Bahai author Abdu'l-Missagh Ghadirian says that materialism is devastating both to society and to individuals; it creates a moral dilemma – unbridled accumulation of wealth or response to economic injustice and corruption:
Materialism in moral terms…can have destructive consequences and may permeate society as a form of social dysfunction. It is an acquired condition and state of mind which develops as a result of a number of factors, including materialistic education, parental attitudes and socio-cultural influences. To remedy this condition, a reconstruction of society's mindset and attitude toward the accumulations of wealth and greedy attachment to it is needed, through a consciousness of and belief in intrinsic moral values and the spiritual reality of existence which transcend dependence on material wealth as a lifestyle.
(Ghadirian, 2010, p. x)
Politics and Face-Saving in Global Media Ethics
Politics is practiced differently in societies around the globe. We do not mean by this that some are representative democracies, others parliamentary democracies, or autocracies, dictatorships or monarchies, although these exist. More significant than the type of government, however, are the practices of politics. An autocracy, for instance, can be authoritarian or benign. A democracy can be inclusive or exclusive – simply by declaring some residents to be persona non grata when it comes to basic rights or claiming the benefits of citizenship. Simply labeling a government is insufficient to understanding how it works, seeks, and maintains legitimacy, deals with dissent, or what it allows by way of access to communication systems or content.
There is an important dimension to politics that reflects cultural values and demonstrates a dimension of moral choices in society. This is the notion of face. In their study of politeness in politics in the United States, Dailey, Hinck, and Hinck (2008, p. 13) argue that debates between candidates represent a clear clash of images that include both positive and negative face. Even the ritualized nature of these debates, and thus criticisms of their artificiality, do not reduce their value. Candidates who refuse to debate, they say, “risk losing political face.” But the stakes are different for each participant. Sometimes balance is expected, while in others, “audiences might be expecting one candidate to show a greater degree of aggression or support” (Ibid.). What matters is whether the face expressed, or defended by a candidate, accords with the expectations of him or her by the audience.
No political candidate (or any other individual, for that matter) is without flaw. This makes face-saving a continual issue as information is uncovered, distributed, or interpreted in various ways. To protect face requires one to be continually on-guard. It can also mean dissembling, or contorting, the truth, sometimes in fantastical ways, to protect face. The more deeply the idea of face is interwoven in culture, the more problematic ethics may be within that context.
One historic encounter between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over missile launchers in Cuba raised the possibility of a nuclear exchange when the United States blockaded Cuban ports. The rhetoric ratcheted up between the two superpowers. But eventually, if war was to be avoided, it became necessary for the two countries – and their respective leaders, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev – to save face. Stella Ting-Toomey (1990, p. 80) explained that these two leaders searched for ways that would allow them to retain both personal and national honor in the effort to de-escalate the conflict. In 2014, in another dispute between the United States and Russia, RIA Novosti claimed, based on opinions of Russian experts, that U.S. vice president Joe Biden visited Ukraine “to explore the possibilities for Washington's face-saving exit from its foreign policy catastrophe” (“Biden to test US face-saving retreat plan for Ukraine,” 2014). As Brown (1977, p. 275) puts it: “Among the most troublesome kinds of problems that arise in negotiation are the intangible issues related to loss of face. In some instances, protecting against loss of face becomes so central an issue that it swamps the importance of the tangible issues at stake and generates intense conflicts that can impede progress toward agreement and increase substantially the costs of conflict resolution.”
The United States is what is referred to as a “low-context” culture. In such cultures the communication is more direct and there is relatively little concern with non-verbal cues. Many other societies, however, are “high-context” cultures, especially those in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Face is a more serious issue in these parts of the globe.
In Thailand, Krisana Kitiyadisai (2005, p. 18) writes: “conflict avoidance or non-confrontation can be disastrous as it results in ‘losing-face’ (‘siar-na’) by either side of the conflict. ‘Face’ represents one's social and professional position, reputation and self-image, so that a loss of face is to be prevented or avoided at all costs – which further means that face-saving or ‘koo-na’ has to be instigated at critical junctures.”
Similarly, in China politics is often driven by the perceived necessity for saving face. Xing Lu (2000, pp. 11–12) says that accusations from the West about human rights violations in China are often met with countercharges, a strategy based on ignoring the accusation and responding with threats: “These are, in fact, face-saving strategies. Instead of arguing against the actual charges, China chose to counterattack, ignore, and pose new threats.” Another similar strategy, he says, is to disregard the premise underlying the attack and then direct attention to a different set of variables and situations: “For example, according to [Mao's principle of bu bi ran (probability)] instead of responding to human rights violation charges from the U.S., the Chinese government countercharges the U.S. with racial discrimination of its own citizens. This approach may not appear logical, but it recognizes the complexity and intricacy of argumentation. Such a strategy is employed by the Chinese government as a means of face saving” (Ibid., p. 12).
Section Summary
We have covered eight dimensions of societies that can help distinguish one from another and that have implications for the practice of ethics. One way to think of these dimensions is as a set of scales, each numbered from five to zero (center) and then again from zero (center) to five (see Figure 1.1). The closer a society adheres to the left side of any of these factors, the more amenable it is to ethical choices; the closer to the right, the more poisonous the context for ethical choice. But even when all the factors are far to the right, ethical choices can still be made. Ethics is more likely to face opposition, however, and those making ethical choices will be battling against various societal expectations when compared to those making choices on the left-hand side. The opportunity to act ethically is more obvious on the left side, but merely operating within such a welcoming environment does not guarantee that ethics will govern choice. There are both different philosophies of ethics and the different purposes of media work to consider. We will take up philosophies in the next two chapters. First, however, we will focus on the reasons for, and expectations of, media workers – their purpose in society.
Figure 1.1 Ethical context factors (see text for details).
Freedom of the Press
The Anglo-American ideal of a free press, founded in post-Enlightenment political philosophy and enshrined most clearly in the United States' First Amendment to its Constitution (part of what is referred to as the Bill of Rights), has gradually become a near-universal ideal around the world. The original impetus for a free press arose during the era of monarchy (political and religious), in which both sedition and blasphemy were highly controlled through censorship and licensing, with penalties for violations ranging from fines, to imprisonment and execution. Elites were in control. Rational arguments against strict control were originally raised by John Milton, who argued that suppression of ideas was nonsensical unless the suppressor could be absolutely certain in his opinion – impossible in Milton's view. This was perhaps not so obvious to the elites in control, many of whom clung to the idea that they were God's appointed rulers. But such arguments did find resonance in the small, but growing, business community that depended on information for their success. Many of them were part of the minority of literate citizens who could see the value of a free press to their own livelihoods. These citizens were the core of what Jürgen Habermas would call the public sphere.
The American and French Revolutions claimed rights for the common people that had been suppressed during the previous autocratically dominated centuries when most people did not count. The idea of “one man, one vote” took on a reality that required an informed citizenry. Freedom of the press took on a new urgency, reinforced by John Stuart Mill's robust defense of its necessity and by the fact that, by about 1850, a majority of people in Western societies were literate (see Fortner, 2013). The need for accurate and up-to-date information was made obvious, too, by the developments in print, film, and radio propaganda in the First and Second World Wars. When the European colonial empires began to disintegrate after the Second World War, with these new societies often heavily influenced by the practices of former colonial rulers, it was common for freedom of the press to be assumed, although economic realities and political instability usually meant state-controlled radio, and later television, systems were developed. Eventually most of these succumbed to new economic realities, massive foreign debt, and slow development, leading to private and commercial ownership of broadcasting.
This all-too-brief and generalized history suggests a central axis in considering the value of a free press: the control of information. Government or corporate elites have attempted to control the distribution of information by requiring licenses for media organizations, licensing media workers, censoring the distribution of information, and using civil law statutes. Additionally, they have influenced the flow of information by engaging in propaganda (including both truthful and false advertising and public relations), funding, creating, and distributing films and radio and television programs, running disinformation campaigns, copyrighting and trademarking intellectual products, dumping products at prices far below their value to establish footholds in new markets, buying up competitors, using national security or proprietary information labels, or even denying any knowledge of information sought by others. Although such tactics may from time to time affect the activities of media organizations – most of which are corporate entities – the real effect of such practices is to influence the interpretation of what a free press is. During the Cold War (1946–1991) Western nations famously argued that there was no free press in the Soviet Union and its client states since the Communist Party controlled the distribution of information. The Soviets and their allies responded in kind, saying there was no free press in the West as its media were controlled by corporate owners that would only publish what was in their own economic interests.
In the twenty-first century countries around the world have embraced the idea of a free press. There are some exceptions, such as North Korea and Cuba (although Cuba began to open up in 2016), and there are also multiple criticisms of the People's Republic of China, Malaysia, East Timor, Brazil, Egypt, Ukraine, Russia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somaliland, South Sudan, Serbia, Hungary, Turkey, Iran, and many others when it comes to actual practices concerning the free press. The United States and the United Kingdom have also been heavily criticized, the former for their treatment of journalists reporting based on leaked information and latter for the creation of an independent commission as a result of the hacking scandal in that country. Reporters without Borders' annual World Press Freedom Index
