ETHICAL FLOURISHING AS AIM OF GLOBAL MEDIA ETHICS

Abstract

This paper proposes a new and comprehensive goal for global media ethics—the promotion of ethical flourishing across borders. The ideal of ethical flourishing underwrites more specific global principles and provides a target at which responsible global journalism can aim. A major task of global media ethics is to re-conceive journalism ethics around the idea of ethical flourishing. Promoting ethical flourishing is defined as the development of four levels of essential goods that together constitute the idea of the human good: individual goods, social goods, political goods, and ethical goods (or the goods of justice). These goods contribute to a life that has rational, social, political, and ethical dignity. The paper uses work in development theory and Sen's “capacity” theory to identify basic capacities that cross borders and should be protected and promoted by global media.

Keywords:

• capacity theory
• ethical flourishing
• global media ethics
• human good
• rational morality

Notes

1. Pindar, Nemean Odes, VIII, 37–44, as quoted in Nussbaum (1986, p. vi).

2. Aristotle was one of the first philosophers to apply this biological perspective to the analysis of the good life. In modern ethical theory, the concept of flourishing received special attention in Anscombe (1997). The concept appears in many other works such as Nussbaum (2006), Brink (1989), Sen (1993), and Kraut (2007).

3. See, for example, the differences between the egalitarian theory of justice of John Rawls (2001) and the libertarian idea of justice in Nozick (1974).