Objectivity plays a central role in Western news media, being considered the cornerstone of professionalism and quality. However, as traditionally and passively practiced, critiques of objectivity include journalists overlooking inherent subjectivities in newsgathering, the impacts of journalists’ ideology on news representation, replication of existing power structures, and portrayals of false balance. These critiques have led to increasing scholarly and professional interest in alternative forms of journalism, including constructive journalism – an approach intended to improve the quality and usefulness of news (...) content. We position constructive journalism as a series of techniques: solutions, future orientation, inclusiveness and diversity, empowerment, context, and co-creation, and consider the relationship of each to an active form of objectivity, clarifying the contested relation of constructive journalism to objective reporting. Further, we describe how constructive techniques help journalists ethically and transparently navigate subjectivity in news reporting, with an aim toward improving the accuracy and quality of news. (shrink)

This study examined the organizational ethics of 51 Chinese media outlets by investigating their organizational statements through breaking them down into three components: definitions, loyalties and values (functions and purposes), and ethical principles (consequentialism vs. formalism). The impact of three characteristics on organizational ethics was also tested. It was found that the Chinese media are most loyal to organizational development, then to the government; and least loyal to their audience. Furthermore, media organizations tend to use consequentialism rather than formalism to (...) justify their moral decisions. This pattern is particularly salient in TV stations compared with daily newspapers. (shrink)

Political debate in an election season is artificially constrained by the media's focus on electability as the primary determinant of news coverage. What gets lost under this criterion is the wealth of ideas that lesser known candidates can bring to the debate. This article argues that political coverage by the mainstream media should be more responsible in its efforts to cultivate public discourse by redefining the standards for who gets covered and challenging the prevailing notions of electability. It also argues (...) for a view of campaign news that is less driven by events and that gives voters more information about candidates' ideas on key issues of the day. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn response to the commentary by Stacey Range Messina, this essay argues that a journalism of verification isn’t sufficient to manage the misinformation coming out of the White House. Instead, in order to best serve the public, journalists need to adopt a more adversarial role with Donald Trump and his administration and directly call them out on their lies. Some news outlets are doing this, and it is the only remedy for a president and White House that regularly trades in (...) disinformation. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to see how Jon Stewart and his Daily Show colleagues hold traditional broadcast media accountable. This paper suggests Stewart is holding those who claim they are practicing journalism accountable to the public they claim to serve and outlines the normative implications of that accountability. There is a journalistic norm that media practitioners, and the media as a whole, should be accountable to the public. Here, accountability “refers to the process by which media are called (...) to account for meeting their obligations” (McQuail, 1997, p. 515). However, the government cannot enforce this accountability due to privileges afforded to the press by the First Amendment. Further, while national press councils have been effective in other countries, specifically India, there is no national press council in the United States. Enforcing accountability, then, falls to journalists—along with press critics. The researchers suggest that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart holds traditional broadcast media accountable in four distinct ways. (shrink)

Video news releases (VNRs) have been criticized when they are used within a newscast without source disclosure because they violate ethical codes related to transparency and consumers' “right to be informed” by whom they are being persuaded. In an experiment, we show how increased persuasion knowledge about VNRs is positively related to beliefs in news commercialization, beliefs in VNR inappropriateness without disclosure, and support for disclosure of VNR material. We suggest that increased knowledge about VNRs without source disclosure measures might (...) harm messages that are not employing the tactic (“false positives”) and lead to a general distrust of all media. (shrink)

Using the recommendations of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, we ask today's media consumers how they rate the performance of modern American journalism. We employ original survey data collected from journalism students at a major Midwest university, framing our findings in the context of the commission's 1947 recommendations. The result is presentation of contemporary opinions about the performance of American media in the context of journalism ideals articulated more than 60 years ago.

The introduction of digital communication technologies has resulted in the emergence of transparency as a journalistic norm. Often termed the “new objectivity,” transparency has been viewed as central to restoring trust in journalism. Not surprisingly, news organizations have claimed they have introduced transparency measures that enable audiences to look behind the curtain of news production. We, however, argue that such efforts primarily involve technological features that are institutionally mandated with little involvement from journalists. That is, transparency in journalism has been (...) digitally outsourced to technology, a development that disconnects journalists from considering and implementing transparency in their work. (shrink)

This project explores the ethical obligations of food journalists. Using history, normative, and feminist theory, I argue that if specific media is going to be considered food journalism, then we should be able to identify its service to citizens. This project thus seeks a unified view for evaluating the democratic and caring potential of food journalism. I outline some of the contours of quality food journalism – its principles, practices and forms – through both historical and contemporary examples. I show (...) how both sets of food journalists adhere(d) to traditional notions of democracy-serving communication while also employing a more situated ethic of care. Ultimately, I argue that quality food journalists should adopt this care ethic addressing citizen-eaters, as this nourishes the relationships necessary for democratic worldmaking and gives us the best opportunity of collectively eating and living well. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article seeks to “contaminate” an ethics of care with three different but interrelated theoretical interventions: the expansion of the care ethic beyond interpersonal relations, ecofeminism, and feminist political theory. This makes care theoretically resilient: durable enough to have grounded meaning but flexible enough for situational application. This also makes care a primary concept capable of subsuming some aspects of the traditional ethical theories of deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. This holds vast implications for journalists as they seek new (...) ways to delineate and articulate their service to democracy in an ever-changing mediascape. Furthermore, this ethic of care engenders media literacy and enables an active public to critically question media content and influence. This theoretical explication is thus not an abstract exercise but intentionally focused to aid the difficult work of worldmaking. (shrink)

When everyone can be a publisher, what distinguishes the journalist? This article considers contemporary challenges to institutional roles in a digital media environment and then turns to three broad journalistic normative values - authenticity, accountability, and autonomy - that affect the credibility of journalists and the content they provide. A set of questions that can help citizens determine the trustworthiness of information available to them emerges from the discussion.

A series of international controversies involving religious offense have manifested the clash of values between freedom of expression and respect for religious identity. Such conflicts pose an ethical dilemma for media. Journalists need to assert freedom of expression, but they should also understand how hate speech can be used to repress targeted groups, and not turn into unwitting facilitators of such campaigns. They should also appreciate that the taking of offense, and not just the giving of it, can be engineered (...) by leaders of religious communities to secure a political advantage. Journalists appear underprepared for handling such events. While not attempting a revision of current codes of ethics, this paper draws on legal discourse to suggest a framework and a language through which journalists can deliberate their ethics to respond to an urgent global challenge. (shrink)

This article critically examines the practice of unnamed sourcing in journalism. A literature review highlights arguments in favor of and against their use. The authors examine some common examples of anonymous sourcing using the lens of utilitarianism, the ethical model commonly used to justify the practice. We find that few uses of unnamed sourcing can be justified when weighed against diminished credibility and threats to fair, transparent reporting. The authors suggest specific guidelines for journalists that, if followed, would curb many (...) of the pedestrian uses of unnamed sourcing but still allow for the practice in specific circumstances. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs news media face declining levels of trust, research has suggested that partisans may differ in their views of news media. Depending on their ideological positions, partisans may have dif...

For the better part of the past decade, global social movements have drawn popular attention to the power of image production and acts of representation, particularly the ways ubiquitous cameras challenge the exercise of power This essay lays out a theoretical schema for interrogating a broader “politics of visibility” at work in the early twenty-first century, most readily apparent through the activities of smartphone-enabled and visually-savvy activists. As new media technologies have opened up new strategies of representation, these modes of (...) representation have been incorporated into existing media practices that delimit the ways in which the consequentiality of various movements and political projects can be understood. Theoretically revisiting the concept of visibility, this essay critiques the relationship between technology and the production of knowledge in media studies before arguing that the visibility of an event presages a consequentiality partially determined by the ways in which it is rendered perceptible and thus, intelligible. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 1, Page 66-68, January-March.

This article proposes a journalism ethics obligation to identify speculation clearly, attribute it to sources, report any basis for it, and offer appropriate qualification, especially when speculation is based on stereotypes of stigmatized groups. Explicitly recognizing this responsibility addresses a gap in the traditional conception of journalistic responsibilities: When journalists fulfill responsibilities corresponding to their gatekeeper and watchdog roles by reporting sources' views, speculation may enter. Examples from major American newspaper and newsmagazine coverage of Andrew Cunanan, an openly gay man (...) who in 1997 allegedly murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace and 4 other men, show how journalists met and failed to meet the proposed obligation when reporting speculation linking Cunanan's sexuality to his crimes. (shrink)

Some have suggested that Jon Stewart of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (TDS) and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report (TCR) represent a new kind of journalist. We propose, rather, that Stewart and Colbert are imitators who do not fully inhabit the role of journalist. They are interesting because sometimes they do a better job performing the functions of journalism than journalists themselves. However, Stewart and Colbert do not share journalists' moral commitments. Therefore, their performances are neither motivated nor (...) constrained by these commitments. Using a virtue theory framework, we suggest that this distinction between journalists and their imitators is morally significant because it implies differences in the kinds of excellence these moral agents are pursuing in their work. Rather than evaluating the work of Colbert and Stewart in the role of journalists, we propose analyzing their contributions to media ethics in the role of media critics. (shrink)

The cyclical nature of presidential elections provides regular opportunities for journalists to reflect on patterns in election coverage. This study presents a textual analysis of press criticism o...

A participatory democracy necessarily minimizes legal restraints on its citizens, substituting, for the common good, moral obligations to contribute with their activities. This article argues that a democratic society is endangered unless both media and citizens accept reciprocal moral obligations related to the distribution and use of information. Journalists are expected to facilitate distribution of information and engage citizens usefully in the knowledge process, fueling the participatory engine that drives a democracy. Citizens, in return, have a reciprocal obligation to expose (...) themselves to useful information, respond publicly, tolerate (and even encourage) diversity, and protect media autonomy. (shrink)