Transparency: An Assessment of the Kantian Roots of a Key Element in Media Ethics Practice

Abstract

This study argues that the notion of transparency requires reconsideration as an essence of ethical agency. It provides a brief explication of the concept of transparency, rooted in the principle of human dignity of Immanuel Kant, and suggests that it has been inadequately appreciated by media ethics scholars and instructors more focused on relatively simplistic applications of his categorical imperative. This study suggests that the concept's Kantian roots raise a radical challenge to conventional understandings of human interaction and, by extension, what it means to exercise freedom.

Acknowledgment

An earlier version of this article was selected as top paper, special call: Secrets and the Media, Media Ethics Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Francisco, CA, August, 2006.