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Abstract
CitationRoger Silverstone (2007) proposed media hospitality as an important element of media ethics. I agree that media hospitality can make a valuable contribution to media ethics. However, I have doubts about grounding media hospitality in what has been referred to as the “deductive abstractions and absolutist language of much media ethics theorizing” founded on Enlightenment assumptions. Despite his own reservations about Enlightenment theorizing, I propose that Silverstone's account ultimately suffers from these problems of abstraction and absolutism, as seen most clearly from the vantage point of Alasdair MacIntyre's neo-Aristotelian theory of virtue ethics.
NOTES
Notes
1. This illustrates Emmanuel Levinas's influence on Silverstone's thinking; Levinas conceived of intersubjective responsibility as a non-reciprocal moral claim from the Other experienced paradigmatically in face-to-face encounters.
2. Whereas Kant placed limits on this right, Silverstone, in arguing for an analogical right of media representation, did not.
3. MacIntyre firmly rejects the communitarian label, however, because its dominant contemporary manifestations, in his view, equate community with the modern state and the market economy. See CitationKnight (2005).
4. CitationMacIntyre (1999) gave special consideration to those who present with urgent needs; here the relevant virtue is Aquinas' misericordia (see pp. 121–128).
5. MacIntyre acknowledged that his argument implies certain political and social structures for human flourishing (the kind of regard in question is ultimately political). This aspect of his argument provides a link to the recent media ethics theorizing of CitationCouldry (2012), CitationWard and Wasserman (2014), and others who factor in political considerations.
6. Besides communal bonds, CitationSilverstone (2007) viewed the enclosures of dominant media, corporations and government regulations as problematic.
7. CitationRawls (1971) acknowledged the potential for cooperation to settle into mere rivalry, but suggested that equal political liberty indirectly addressed this problem by “lay(ing) the foundations for civic friendship” (p. 234). CitationSandel (1989) called this a “sentimental” account of community (p. 149).
8. CitationSteiner (2013) made a similar point regarding feminist standpoint epistemology's claim that experience is relevant while not essentializing cultural identity or claiming for it some privileged access to knowledge.