Media Ethics: Opening Social Dialogue

Front Cover
Peeters Publishers, 2000 - Business & Economics - 422 pages
All of us form some kind of idea about what we see, hear or read in the media, not only about the content of the reports but also about the way in which they are presented and their relevance. We judge the reports as good or bad for this or that reason. And yet most people remain convinced that 'media ethics' has nothing to do with them. The term 'media ethics' leaves many people with the false impression that it refers to an exclusive specialist discipline for professionally trained experts. Ethics is not a field like biochemistry or ancient history : ethics has more to do wit the skill of being able to distinguish good institutions, actions and ideas from ones that are not so good, a skill everybody needs to exercise, certainly in this age where media are so influential. It is important for the well-being of our societies and democracies that the questions about good media are on the top of the agenda of everyone involved in it : producers, broadcasters, journalists, politicians, internet providers and media users. In this volume, well known ethicists and social scientists present their introduction to this question from various perspectives and different points of departure. With their contributions they hope to open a balanced social dialogue that will prevail over commercial and rhetorical violence.
 

Contents

Professional Ethics and Ethics Education Vision of
1
Introduction
9
An Intellectual History of Media Ethics
15
Moral Dialogue Creating
47
Normative Paradigms and Public Cultural Truth 69
69
Media and Democracy 66
99
Can Human Rights Be a Foundation for Media Ethics?
127
The Need for Understanding Mass Psychology in MediaEthics
199
Journalism Ethics
249
Seven Characteristics of the Ethical Public Communicator
283
Media Ethics and the Issue of Moral Choice
315
Computer Ethics
325
Journalistic Liberty and the Invasion of Privacy
357
Three Examples
375
Ethics for Media Users
403
Fundamental Questions of Audience Ethics
413

Facts and Figures
215

Common terms and phrases