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Abstract
The digital media revolution has created a revolution in journalism ethics. Established principles are under scrutiny, new practices emerge, and a previous professional consensus on the aims and principles of responsible journalism has been shattered. Journalism ethics has to be re-invented for a global, digital media. The once cozy world of journalism ethics—a somewhat sleepy domain of agreed-upon codes of ethics too often presumed to be invariant—is becoming a faint memory from an earlier media era. We witness the end of a tidy, pre-digital journalism ethics for professionals and the birth of an untidy digital journalism ethics for everyone. Although the digital media revolution is much-discussed, the far-reaching consequences of this revolution for journalism ethics is less discussed, and not clearly understood. This article views the state of journalism ethics through the lens of this digital revolution. To get a sense of the depth of the ethical revolution, it compares pre-digital media ethics and the evolving digital media ethics. The article identifies the assumptions of the pre-digital approach to ethics, and describes the “fatal blow” that digital media delivered to this traditional framework. The article argues for a radical media ethics and outlines some features of the emerging ethics. It concludes with an agenda for digital journalism ethics. The guiding idea is that we need serious and systematic responses to the situation of journalism ethics today, and such changes should be radical—not piecemeal or conservative.
Notes
1. I use the term “everyone” to emphasize how journalism ethics is now applicable to citizens, while aware of the digital divides that exist around the world.
2. I am not advancing a “technological determinism” perspective. While the advance of digital technology was crucial to changes in journalism and its ethics, the existence of technology by itself does not guarantee a revolution. The media revolution was, and has been, sustained by other factors such as a literate and technologically savvy populace, and freedom of expression.
5. For a full explanation of my approach, see Radical Media Ethics (Ward, Citationforthcoming).
6. I provide candidates for integrative principles in Radical Media Ethics (Ward, Citationforthcoming).
7. Recently, I joined the committee to revise the SPJ code, a four-year process that comes 18 years after the previous revision. At time of writing, the committee had agreed upon a final draft for consideration of SPJ members. The committee decided to retain the tradition of the code stipulating standards for all journalists, and to not mention specific types of journalists, such as advocacy journalists, or specific types of media platforms, such as social media. The decision to maintain this approach stimulated much committee discussion.
8. The ONA website and description of the project is at http://journalists.org/resources/build-your-own-ethics-code.
9. I was one of the writers who contributed advice on how to think about different ethical questions. My area was the use of quotations.
10. For example, at one meeting of the SPJ code revision committee which I attended, a member said a DIY approach lacks the “courage” to stand behind important ethical values.
11. In this context, “media ethics” includes journalism and other media uses. However, journalism is the focus of much of global media ethics.
12. In Ward Citation2010, I provided a unifying framework for global journalism based on principles of human flourishing and global justice. In Radical Media Ethics (Ward, Citationforthcoming), I go further to specify the content of an integrative, global ethics.
13. See http://newsroom.cisco.com.
14. See http://www.redbull.com/us/en.
15. For a sample of this genre of media criticism, see Patterson (Citation1994), Hachten (Citation1998), Jones (Citation2009), and McChesney (Citation2004).
16. The center is at http://pulitzercenter.org/.
17. The NGO’s website is http://worldpulse.com/about/worldpulse.