Media Ethics 2001 Abstracts
Media Ethics Division
Social Dimensions of Ethics Decisions in Newswork: A Comparison Across Ethical Situations • Dan Berkowitz, University of Iowa and Yehiel Limor, Tel-Aviv University • This paper studied decisions about ethical problems in newsgathering through five social dimensions: individual, small group, organizational, professional, and societal. Data were gathered through a mail survey of reporters in one Midwest state. Results found two broad response patterns, one basing decisions chiefly on professional autonomy and public interest, and another pattern that considered all five social dimensions more broadly. These patterns were most clearly distinguished by a reporter’s degree of professional experience.
The Ethics Agenda of the Mass Communication Professoriate • Jay Black, University of South Florida, Bruce Garrison, University of Miami, Fred Fedler, University of Central Florida, and Doug White, University of South Florida • This study reviews a growing body of faculty ethics literature and surveys one-third of the AEJMC membership about its attitudes toward 65 different issues. Forty-eight percent of the 775 people who received the mail questionnaire in late 2000 provided usable responses. They indicated that in many respects journalism and mass communications faculty are very similar to colleagues from other disciplines, but on many items, are far more sensitive to the welfare of students.
History, Hate and Hegemony: What’s a Journalist To Do? • Bonnie Brennen and Lee Wilkins, University of Missouri • This paper focuses on the distribution of a KKK flier in Columbia, Missouri, as a case study through which to explore the responsibility of journalists confronting the issue of hate speech. It draws on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, which is contrasted with an ethically-based discussion of the societal impact of hate speech. In an effort to help journalists cover hate without furthering its ends, this paper concludes with some practical advice for journalists that is grounded in communitarian theory and the notion of journalism as a transformational activity.
The Role of Questions in TV News Coverage of the Ethics of Cloning • David A. Craig and Vladan Pantic, University of Oklahoma • This study is a qualitative analysis of how the ethics of cloning was portrayed in 36 network TV news pieces after the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1997. It focuses on ethical questions, a prominent feature of most of the stories. All but a few questions pointed to issues of ethical duty or consequences, though often only in general terms. Responsible uses of questions are discussed, along with uses that distorted or sensationalized.
Characterizing Plagiarism: An Interdisciplinary Critical Analysis • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, University of North Carolina • This paper presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the literature on plagiarism in an effort to inform the discussion on plagiarism in journalism. It argues that characterizations of journalistic plagiarism as a recent trend work against solving the problem. It identifies three characterizations of plagiarism the behavioral, empirical and structuralist approaches – and argues that industry observers tend to see journalistic plagiarism through the behavioral lens and would benefit from a more comprehensive view.
The Fairness Factor: Exploring the Perception Gap Between Journalists and the Public • Deborah Gump, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Few moral frameworks as formed as early in life as fairness, and few are more difficult to define. While journalists focus on professional values of even-handed and dispassionate reporting as the basis of fairness, readers often include social values of compassion and respect. This paper offers a definition of fairness within the contexts of procedural and distributive justice and uses two surveys to find that journalists and the public hold different values for three of four selected elements of fairness: accuracy, balance, respect, and reporting expertise in a subject area. Journalists and the public are also found to be poor judges of how the other values the four elements.
WHAT WOULD THE EDITOR DO? A THREE-YEAR STUDY OF STUDENT- JOURNALISTS AND THE NAMING OF RAPE VICTIMS IN THE PRESS • Kim E. Karloff, California State University-Northridge • According to recent surveys, 80 percent of Americans say the news media “often invade people’s privacy,” 52 percent say they think the news media abuse the First Amendment, and 82 percent think reporters are insensitive to people’s pain. In the case of whether or not those in the press should name or not name the survivors of rape, journalism students – those who will be making these decisions in the future – have offered even more opinions, newsroom policy suggestions, and optimism. The purpose of this three-year, 140-student study was to examine how these future journalists might write/rewrite newsroom policy on naming names. Their responses include: a call to publish names, but only if the victim asks for or consents to identification; a charge to lessen the impact of the social stigma attached to the crime; and a request for the ethical treatment of rape victims and survivors.
Applying Sociological Theory to Statements on News Principles: Functionalist, Monopolist, and Public Service/Status Claims in Four Recent Journalism Ethics Codes • Susan Keith, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examined four recently written or rewritten journalism ethics codes in light of functionalist, monopolist, and public service/status views of professional ethics described in the sociological literature. All three types of theoretical elements were present in the Gannett newspapers, Radio-Television News Directors Association, and Tampa Tribune codes. However, the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors code featured only monopolist elements. As predicted in Andrew Abbott’s work on professional ethics, the elements present in the codes corresponded roughly to the external pressures on the organizations that wrote them.
Impartial Spectator in the Marketplace of Ideas: The Principles of Adam Smith as an Ethical Basis for Regulation of Corporate Speech • Robert L. Kerr, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This integrative essay offers an ethical basis justifying regulation of corporate speech, based on the neglected moral and political theories of Adam Smith. His essential tenets on free markets are applied to the First Amendment marketplace of ideas concept that has been prominent in developing corporate free-speech rights. It is argued that regulation of corporate speech cam actually enable more ideas to flourish in the political marketplace – advancing utilitarian ideals of the common good.
Privacy and the pack: Ethical considerations faced by local papers covering the JFK Jr. plane crash • Mark W. Mulcahy, University of Missouri-Columbia • Local journalists covering the deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Kennedy and Lauren Bessette primarily dealt with three ethical dilemmas. The first issue was the invasion of the Kennedys’ privacy through photographs. Second, reporters had to consider privacy, accuracy and credibility in their use of unnamed sources. The third issue was how increased competition affected the journalists’ ethical decision-making. This case study examines the link between those dilemmas and local journalists’ behavior.
Leaks: How Do Codes of Ethics Address Them? • Taegyu Son, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper is to analyze how journalistic codes of ethics wrestle with the matter of leaks. Leaks are an important means for the government to control the media. In order to maintain their competitiveness, journalists become the government’s managerial tool, often ignoring fundamental precepts of journalism ethics – independence and the fourth estate function. Codes of ethics have been the most widely used mechanism for journalistic accountability. None of the 41 codes analyzed explicitly mentions leaks.
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