The ninth edition of Media Ethics: Issues and Cases has been updated to reflect the most pressing ethical issues in media. Featuring 25 new cases on hot topic issues from fake news to drones and a new chapter on social justice, this authoritative case book gives students the tools to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment.

Whereas professional persuasion is a means to an immediate and instrumental end, ethical persuasion must rest on or serve a deeper, morally based final end. Among the moral final ends of journalism, for example, are truth and freedom. There is a very real danger that advertisers and public relations practitioners will play an increasingly dysfunctional role in the communications process if means continue to be confused with ends in professional persuasive communications. Means and ends will continue to be confused unless (...) advertisers and public relations practitioners reach some level of agreement as to the moral end toward which their efforts should be directed. In this article we advance a five-part test that defines this moral end, establishes ethical boundaries that should guide persuasive practices, and serves as a set of action-guiding principles directed toward a moral consequence in professional persuasion. The TARES Test consists of five principles: Truthfulness, Authenticity, Respect, Equity and Social Responsibility. We provide checklists to guide the practitioner in moral reflection and application of TARES Test principles. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The ethical dimensions of health communicators' interventions and campaigns are brought into question in this thought-provoking book. Examining the efforts to effect behavior change, the author questions how far health communication can and should go in changing people's values. The author broadens the current analysis of interventions and presents conceptual frameworks that help identify values and justifications that are embedded in health communication goals, strategies, and evaluation criteria. This critical approach helps explain how and why choices are made in design (...) and implementation, and provides constructs and frameworks to examine them. It also widens the criteria for program evaluation and policymaking, and provides practitioners, planners, policy-makers, researchers, and students with practice-oriented questions. (shrink)

This study conducted the first empirical testing of Baker and Martinson's TARES test of ethical consideration factors for public relations practitioners. The TARES test is composed of 5 interconnected parts: truthfulness of the message, authenticity of the persuader, respect for the persuadee, equity of the appeal, and social responsibility for the common good. Results of an online exploratory survey indicate that the TARES test is better suited for a 3-factor configuration based on Day's definition of moral knowledge and that ethical (...) consideration levels differ based on age, education, gender, and political ideology. (shrink)