A thoughtful addition to the growing debate over public and private morality. Looks at lying and deception in law, family, medicine, government.

Based on a survey of editors, publishers and staff members of 300 newspapers, this work documents the ethical confusion in the American press in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers controversy. It provides an analytical and historical framework to show how the press reached this point and argues for an ethical audit to give publications an independent check on their moral condition.

This study attempts to refine and test a theory of social influences on ethical decisions of journalists. The theoretical model proposes that several social factors influence any given decision, and that a hierarchy of influences assigns relative value to each: individual, small group, organization, competition, occupation, extramedia, and law. Print and broadcast journalists reacted to 3 hypothetical scenarios that raised ethical problems. The journalists then rated the salience of various reasoning statements, each representing 1 of the 7 social influences. No (...) single source of ethical guidance appeared; in many cases different influences emerge as powerful under different circumstances. But of the 7 proposed influences, 5 showed consistent strength in predicting the decision the journalist makes. The individual influence was the weakest of the 7, despite its prominent strength in the literature. The organizational and small-group strength suggests company-level strategies for media policy-makers who wish to increase journalists'ethical awareness. Overall, the study seems to challenge a traditional assumption that in ethical dilemmas journalists are autonomous moral agents, acting on the basis of their own values alone. The data support the notion of a far more dynamic and complex pattern of social influences. (shrink)

Many journalists, readers and scholars exhibit confusion concerning the nature and justification of deception. In this article, we clarify those acts that should count as deception. Before discussing if any cases of deception can be construed as morally justified, we clarify which investigative, interrogative, and information-giving techniques are deceptive on their face. We also bracket borderline cases.

As the worlds of economics, politics, culture, and communications face a growing wave of globalization that will likely continue, ethical challenges for journalists have also gone global. I propose a clear division between ethics codes for media owners, the public, and professional journalists and present a set of considerations and specific rules applicable only to the last group. In this article I advocate a universal code of journalistic ethics but point out problems and warn against dangers that have made the (...) application of such codes difficult in the past. A universal code should consider the voluntary nature of such an endeavor, the cultural and economic differences in various journalistic traditions, and the problem of producing solutions acceptable to all involved. (shrink)

If a quest for universal ethical standards in journalism is to be productive, we should first be able to articulate an overarching set of universal ethical standards that can apply across cultures, across ethical schools of thought, across professions. In this article I offer 4 likely universal standards that have relevance to journalism, suggesting universal journalism standards can also be identified. Although these and other standards will not be panaceas for the ethical dilemmas journalists often face, they provide needed anchors (...) for decision making. (shrink)

"Using hundreds of examples from newsrooms large and small, author Ron F. Smith challenges readers to determine how they would face moral dilemmas on the job. Chapters evaluate the search for principles, accountability, truth and objectivity, errors and corrections, diversity, "faking" the news, reporters and their sources, privacy, the government watch, deception, compassion, the business of news, journalists and their communities, and financial concerns. New to this edition: a chapter on improving coverage of minorities, expanded discussion of broadcast journalism and (...) reporting on the Internet, and stories from recent front pages and TV news programs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Should journalists resist business constraints they perceive as a threat to their professional integrity? This article suggests that the answer, at least sometimes, is yes. But in choosing a resistance strategy, journalists should not consider the "take this job and shove it" stance as the only option with moral integrity-or even as the best ethical option. This article develops a model of resistance strategies using the experiences of journalists at one newspaper to illustrate the range of options available for resisting (...) business constraints within a news organization. The types of strategies identified vary along the ethical dimensions of (a) consideration of organizational, as well as professional, goals; and (b) openness with regard to journalists' preference for professional goals. (shrink)

The philosophic lineage of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and James Rest has been traced to Kant, but elements of cognitive moral development are evident from Aristotle forward. Kohlberg's constructs of stages or levels, of upward movement through those stages, and valuated end-states are congruent with how ethics and epistemology were advanced in empiricists' and rationalists' exchanges. Since developmentalists share journalism's common ethical heritage, introducing cognitive moral developmentalism into the study of journalism ethics heightens perspectives on ethical practices already latent in (...) the business and academicians' study of journalism ethics. ;Rest's Defining Issues Test yielded a domain-general Principled moral score, and the Journalist's Instrument measured a domain-specific Principled score of journalists' ethical thought. The theoretical difference between the DIT and the JI was the introduction of a Craft element, which elucidated ethical distillates within the trade that are primarily procedural in nature. A survey, derived from past studies of journalists, obtained data from a population of 71 from across the United States. Based on how ethicists and epistemologists built theory by reflection and exchanges, interviews with another 85 journalists sought behavioral evidences of stages, movement, and valuated end-states as they dealt with constructed dilemmas. ;In terms of cognitive moral development, journalists are an above-average group who outscored other groups on the DIT with more formal education--the strongest predictor in other studies. They also continued to mature into the age of post-formal development as median-age adults rather than leveling off at around age 24. Regression analysis showed journalists' education, their perceptions of levels in life, and their values were significant predictors of cognitive moral development. As long as journalists produced stories, they matured. ;The differences in their domain-general and domain-specific scores seemed to result from reliance on procedural rather than principled thinking and look-ahead behaviors associated with expertise. Strong evidence indicated that the dilemma-like nature of news stories resets default hierarchies in the non-monotonic, defeasible thinking of journalists on ethical issues. Also, it appeared possible that one story could have a strong enough impact to reset the default hierarchy an entire stage in a journalist's thinking. (shrink)

Insights from First Amendment considerations and from developmental psychology are utilized in suggesting that whatever value codes of ethics may hold for the mass media, they represent serious difficulties in inculcating substantial ethical values in individual journalists and in the profession as a whole. Evidence from developmental psychology suggests that codes are probably of some limited value to the neophyte working in the media. Codes also help assure non?journalists that the industry really is concerned about ethics. However, codes probably should (...) be relegated to a framed wall hanging for any journalists who have advanced beyond their internships. Confusion reigns because codes are often founded on moralistic rather than moral?philosophical bases, and there is a blurring between general precepts and specific practices covered in codes. As individual professionals mature intellectually and ethically, they should transcend socially?approved conventions codified by ?regulators,?; and begin to become social catalysts in their own rights, according to this essay. (shrink)

Should journalists resist business constraints they perceive as a threat to their professional integrity? This article suggests that the answer, at least sometimes, is yes. But in choosing a resistance strategy, journalists should not consider the "take this job and shove it" stance as the only option with moral integrity-or even as the best ethical option. This article develops a model of resistance strategies using the experiences of journalists at one newspaper to illustrate the range of options available for resisting (...) business constraints within a news organization. The types of strategies identified vary along the ethical dimensions of consideration of organizational, as well as professional, goals; and openness with regard to journalists' preference for professional goals. (shrink)

Environmental journalism has been criticized by various special interest groups and some editors for advocacy and faulted for inaccuracies. Sources, in turn, many from the science communities, have been accused of inaccessibility, and public relations representatiws from both industry and environmental organizations are regularly blamed for unethical behaviors rangingfrom hyperbole to more serious discussion or omission of factual information. This article reports a preliminary study of ethical decision making among members of the Society of Environmental Journalists, identifying ethical motivation diljerences (...) using the Ethical Motivation Scale. The implications of the reported dominant extrinsic guides are discussed in light of a proposed protocol for ethical environmental communication. (shrink)

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

This study gathered preliminary baseline data on the moral development of journalists using the Defining Issues Test, an instrument based on Kohlberg's 6 stages. Results show that a sample of journalists scored 4th highest among professionals tested using the DIT. The journalists ranked behind seminarians/philosophers, medical students, and physicians but above dental students, nurses, graduate students, undergraduate college students, veterinary students, and adults in general. No significant differences were found between various groups of journalists, including men and women, and broadcast (...) and print journalists. The journalists in the study scored significantly higher on the 3 journalism-specific dilemmas than on 3 nonjournalism dilemmas. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study in contrasts between the philosophical tradition that has historically guided modern journalism, that is, the libertarian tradition, and a more virtue-centered approach, here exemplified in the work of Canadian contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor. Libertarian journalism privileges freedom of the press , and the rights of journalists and to a lesser extent the rights of those whom they would serve. Taylor emphasizes the nature of one's character as essential to moral action, and the bonds of community (...) as the foundation for moral demands. ;Thus, this dissertation provides an outline of an alternate framework from which journalists may think about moral dilemmas and explores the present reasoning process of professional journalists and journalism students. Taylor's notions of strong evaluation and practical reason provide the foundation of a virtue-based approach to journalistic moral decisions. According to Taylor, people do weigh comparative goods and make judgments about the worthiness of actions and values or lack thereof. Furthermore, determining the good has a basis in reason. ;A study of the journalists and students uses face-to-face interviews with two- and three-person groups reacting to a series of moral scenarios and subsequent probes. Both a content analysis and a discourse analysis of the transcripts provide conclusions about moral reasoning among journalists. The content analysis demonstrates that both journalists and students preponderantly use procedural or liberal-based language to describe their moral reasoning but professional journalists even more so. Reliance on journalistic conventions supplies most of that language. The discourse analysis also indicates that journalists and students alike discussed their moral decisions based on procedural language but were somewhat uncomfortable at times with the perceived tension between the demands of their profession and their humanity. Students tended to be more hesitant, to raise more virtue-based issues, and to offer more virtue-based responses. ;The results are consistent with an assumption that moral decisions in journalism are in part learned reactions rather than intuitive ones, thus opening an opportunity for an alternative framework, such as one based on Taylor's work, to be viable. (shrink)