For most of its history, journalism ethics has been highly practical in aim, in theorizing, and in application. Inquiry analyzed what was occurring inside newsrooms. Inquiry was parochial, focusing on certain types of journalism, specific problems such as accuracy or balance, or the development of codes of conduct for local and regional journalism associations.1 The practical nature of journalism ethics is entirely appropriate, since the aim is to improve practice. But parochialism is questionable in a global world where journalism has far-reaching impact. As I will argue, a major task of journalism ethics is to construct a more non-parochial ethics—a global journalism ethics informed by critical work from various disciplines and cultures. A parochial approach no longer serves journalism, the study of journalism, or the public of journalism.
By examining parochialism, we envisage a more relevant and inclusive journalism ethics for the twenty-first century. The challenge is to widen and deepen the conceptual base of journalism ethics as a global-minded discipline. In recent years, media scholars in Canada and beyond have begun the construction. Much more needs to be done.
In this paper, I begin by charting the trajectory of journalism ethics over several centuries. This overview helps to explain the role of parochialism and the limits of theorizing in journalism ethics. It also suggests new directions for research and theorizing. Given this historical perspective, I then sketch what a future journalism ethics might look like, if we widen the conceptual base in two respects—by incorporating new knowledge of media from outside journalism ethics, and by redefining journalism ethics as a global enterprise.
Roots of Journalism Ethics
By “ethics” I mean the analysis of correct conduct, responsible practice, and fair human interactions in the light of the best available principles. Ethics is also about practical judgment—the applicationof principles to issues and decisions. Ethics encompasses theoretical and practical reasoning. Theoretically, ethics is the analysis (or “meta-ethics”) of the language of ethics, of forms of ethical reasoning, and of the objectivity of moral principles. Practically, ethics is “applied ethics,” the study of principles for such domains as corporate governance, scientific research, and professional practice (Dimock & Tucker, 2004). Applied ethics or “normative ethics” comes in in two forms: (a) arguing for certain principles and ethical philosophies, such as utilitarianism, and (b) using these principles to debate the goodness or rightness of actions.
Where is journalism ethics on this “map” of ethics? It is a type of applied ethics. It is the analysis of the practice of journalism, and the application of its principles to situations and issues. Journalism ethics investigates the “micro” problems of what individual journalists should do in particular situations, and the “macro” problems of what news media should do, given their role in society. The issues of journalism ethics include the limits of free speech, accuracy and bias, fairness and privacy, the use of graphic images, conflicts of interest, the representation of minorities, and the role of journalism.
A question about journalism is an ethical question, as opposed to a question of prudence or custom, if it evaluates conduct in the light of the fundamental public purposes and social responsibilities of journalism. What are those purposes? Historically, the aims of journalism include: to disseminate information; to interpret events; to act as watchdog on power; to advocate for reform or to advocate for certain causes; to educate and empower the public as citizens and to guide public opinion; and to serve (or propagandize for) the party or the state. The aims form a continuum from factual reporting to interpretive analysis to social activism.
The history of journalism ethics can be divided roughly into five stages. Each is dominated by press theories about the principles and goals of journalism.
First, there was the invention of ethical discourse for journalism as it emerged in Western Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Gutenberg’s press in the mid-fifteenth century gave birth to printer-editors who created a periodic news press of “newsbooks” under state control. Despite the primitive nature of their newsgathering, and the partisan nature of their times, editors assured readers that they printed the impartial truth based on “matters of fact.” This news press grew up in tension with the first theory of the press—the authoritarian view that sees the press as servant of the state.2
The second stage was the creation of a “public ethic” as a creed for the growing newspaper press of the Enlightenment public sphere, especially in England, France, and the United States. Journalists claimed to be tribunes of the public, protecting their liberty against government. They advocated reform and eventually revolution. By the end of the century, the press was a socially recognized institution, a power to be praised or feared, with guarantees of freedom in the post-revolution constitutions of the United States and France. This public ethic was the basis for the idea of a Fourth Estate—the press as one of the governing institutions of society (Ward, 2005: 89-173).
The third stage was the evolution of the idea of a Fourth Estate into the liberal theory of the press, during the nineteenth century (Siebert, 1956). Liberal theory began with the premise that a free and independent press was necessary for the protection of the liberties of the public and the promotion of liberal reform. Leading journalists claimed that the press represented the public better than Parliament did. The press was indispensable to governing because it formed public opinion. The liberal view became the liberal-democratic ideal of the late 1800s which defined journalism as serving, first and foremost, a self-governing citizenry or mass society. The press’s primary allegiance is to this public, not to their leader, not to their government, not to the state or any of its institutions. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the hope of liberalism was that a press ‘made’ free would serve this public. It would be a sober educator of the masses, a promoter of liberal society and a protector of liberty against tyranny. From the 1800s to the present, people have modified this liberal view, while others have critiqued its ideas. Yet it remains at the heart of most discussions on news media today.
The fourth stage was the simultaneous development and criticism of the liberal-democratic view throughout the twentieth century. Both the development and the criticism were responses to deficiencies in the liberal press. The “developers” were journalists and ethicists who constructed a professional ethics of objective journalism, bolstered by social responsibility theory.3 Objectivism sought to use adherence to fact and impartiality toward political party to restrain a free press that was increasingly sensational (or “yellow”) and dominated by business interests (Baldasty, 1992; Campbell, 2001). Social responsibility theory (Peterson, 1956) originated in the United States in the 1940s, amid concerns about the power of the press. The theory called on the free press to use its freedom to serve the public through informed reportage and diverse views. The “critics” were journalists who rejected the restraints of objective professional reporting and practiced more interpretive, partial forms of journalism such as investigative reporting and activist journalism.
The result was that, over the years, new aims and new duties were added to the original liberal stress on liberty of publication. For example, in the early 1990s, objectivism argued that the press had a duty to be objective in news, and reporters should be “balanced” and get both sides of a story. Social responsibility theory argued that the press should provide a forum for diverse voices, even if the voices differed from the newspaper’s own views. Nothing like this was envisaged by the original, partisan journalists who fought for a free press in the eighteenth century.
In the second half of the 1900s, journalists were called upon to serve even more aims. In the 1960s, objective reporting was questioned by an activist journalism that opposed wars and supported civil rights. The purpose of journalism, it was argued, was not simply to report but to bring about a more equitable society by fairly representing and empowering the many groups seeking recognition. In addition, communitarians called upon the press to strengthen communal values, rather than encourage individualism. Feminists sought a journalism that did not demean women and which fostered caring relations among citizens. Civic journalists argued that journalism’s primary purpose was to re-ignite public engagement with politics (Rosen, 1996).
By the late 1900s, the objective professional model was challenged even further by new forms of media on the Internet, although liberal ideas about the need for diversity and the empowerment of citizens found new emphasis. Journalism entered its fifth stage, a stage of “mixed media” where the public obtained information from a mixture of traditional and new media. Online journalism re-defined the role of journalist from professional gatekeeper to a facilitator of conversation and social networking. Not only were increasing numbers of non-professional citizen journalists and bloggers engaging in journalism, but these communicators used interactive multi-media that challenged the ideas of cautious verification and gate-keeping. As a result, journalism ethics was (and continues to be) fraught with disagreement on the most basic notions of what journalism is and what journalists are “for” (Rosen, 1999).
Widening the Base
These developments of press theory in the late 1900s were not the only sign that journalism ethics was undergoing a significant transformation. Several other trends indicated that journalism ethics, to face the future, had to start re-thinking its basic concepts, assumptions, and approaches to the study of responsible journalism.
One trend was the development of media studies and criticism which made journalism, and media in general, an object of serious academic study. The past half-century has seen an unprecedented rise in the study of media and culture, and in the channels available for public discussion of journalism, from new books, journals, and web sites to new institutes for the study of journalism ethics and practice. Scholars, working in academic departments of sociology or political science, or in expanding schools of journalism and communication, pursue vigorous lines of research such as the agenda-setting role of media (McCombs, Shaw & Weaver, 1997), audience theory (McQuail, 1997), media economics and sociology (Picard, 1989; Albarran & Chan-Olmsted, 1998; McQuail, 1969), moral development among journalists (Wilkins & Coleman, 2005), and the history of journalism ethics (Spencer, 2007; Ward, 2005). Journals and magazines publish ever new case studies and surveys using content analysis and other quantitative and qualitative methods of social science.
These studies provide ethicists with data and enlarge the conceptual and empirical base of journalism ethics as a discipline. Journalism ethics becomes less anecdotal and ‘example-driven’ due to empirical and theoretical analysis. Discussions of ethics now take place against this growing body of literature on the relation of journalism ethics to economics, ideology, politics, and global culture.
Critical Theories
Among these studies of the media, one of the most influential in widening perspectives has been a range of critical perspectives from disciplines external to journalism and journalism ethics — political science, sociology, and culture and communication studies. These perspectives can be loosely collected under the term, “critical theories,” with one important type being post-colonial studies (Ahluwalia & Nursey-Bray, 1997; Shome & Hegde, 2002; Young, 2003). These theories critique the project of journalism ethics by considering the relationship between ethical discourse and the exercise of power, Western economic and cultural dominance, and post-modern skepticism about truth and objectivity.
What these studies have in common is a desire to critique journalists and news media as social and political agents, according to theories developed in other disciplines. A common starting point of post-colonial theory is a disenchantment with Western notions of rationality, universality, objective knowledge, and progress. Wasserman (2007: 8) writes, “[p]ostcolonialism shares with postmodernism the engagement with the failure of modernity to live up to its own ideals and ambitions.” Critical theories resist attempts to impose a hegemonic system of Western ideas and values on other cultures, especially “neo-liberal” ideas. For some writers, the attempt to speak about universal values is suspect, since it suggests an “essentialism” that denies “difference”.
From a critical perspective, professional journalism ethics today shares the biases and limitations of the liberalism upon which it is based. Liberal press theory is said to be grounded in Enlightenment forms of thought that are male, Euro-centric, individualistic, and universal. Ethical discourse is not politically innocent but can be a political act of power. Just as journalism can propagate Western propaganda (Chomsky, 1997), the promotion of Western journalism ethics can be a form of cultural propaganda. Critical theories warn that Western ideas can be used to justify imperialistic and ‘colonizing’ purposes. Fourie (2007: 4), for example, notes that, “[i]t starts from the view that institutionalized knowledge and theories about issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and the media are/were subject to forces of colonialism.”
What are some implications of these critical theories for journalism ethics? One implication is that media scholars, textbooks, and teachers should “de-Westernize” journalism ethics. Non-Western journalism practices and theories should be more central to Western discussions of journalism ethics. For example, some writers have examined whether the African tradition of ubuntuism, of respect for community, should be the basis for African journalism. Ubuntuism’s communal values are thought to be more in line with African society than a Western stress on a free and individualistic press (Fourie, 2007).
De-Westernization also means using cross-cultural comparisons when discussing the principles of media ethics, and giving due weight to African, Indian and Eastern ethical systems. This raises the issue of how different traditions of journalism ethics should be used and brought together to form a richer cross-cultural approach. The first and primary goal is to engage in cross-cultural dialogue about journalism ethics, to explore both common ground and differences. For example, in Africa, individual journalists seek ethical norms that would help them serve their public according to local conditions. Nevertheless, many African journalists look to Western codes of ethics which may or may not be appropriate to African culture. One result of adopting a more critical and cross-cultural approach is that we avoid the two extremes of a universalism insensitive to local contexts, and a localism that believes each journalism culture has separate values and has little to learn from other traditions. In bringing the local and global together in journalism ethics, one develops a rich ethical discussion where traditions meet, overlap, and differ.
Another implication is that journalism ethics should place more emphasis on a nuanced representation of other peoples. Mis-representation can spark wars, demean other cultures, and support unjust social structures. Such issues go beyond traditional and limited issues of factual accuracy which have dominated journalism ethics.4 They require journalists to have a deeper cultural knowledge and a deeper appreciation of how language can distort “the other.”5 Paying attention to issues of representation means questioning the everyday news practices that routinely exclude less powerful voices. This means defining “news” to include issues of social justice and their historical context, not just daily events and facts. It means seeking a greater diversity of sources in stories, and telling such stories from the perspective of non-dominant groups. Critical theories suggest that journalism ethics requires a commitment to social change that is more at home in the traditions of interpretive and activist journalism. In addition, journalism education should supplement the traditional emphasis on reporting skills and fact gathering with a more ethnographic approach that stresses cultural and international knowledge (Alia, 2004: 23, 26). The understanding of the imperative to “seek truth and report”—a major principle of journalism codes of ethics—is thereby transformed. Reporting is not viewed as ‘stenography of fact’ but rather as an informed interpretation of events in a larger cultural context.
In summary, these critical, cross-cultural perspectives call for an enlargement of the conceptual base of journalism ethics. This entire range of thinking—feminist, post-modern, communitarian, and post-colonial—changes the basic discourse of journalism ethics and needs to be incorporated into ethical theory, textbooks and teaching. The key theoretical debates extend beyond the traditional debate between liberal and social responsibility theory. The debate now includes such issues as the relationship of ethics and power, media representation and dominant cultures, the social construction of identities, differences in ways of knowing and valuing, and the relationship of the local and global. These far-reaching critiques expose a lack of theoretical depth in journalism ethics. As an applied discipline, journalism ethics too often falls back on simplistic appeals to general concepts such as “truth-seeking,” “freedom,” “serving the public,” and “democracy.” Recent academic and critical theories of news media note that such terms are contested (Berger, 2000). Clarification and re-formulation of basic concepts is necessary.
“Go Global”
The discussion in the previous section examined the widening of the conceptual base of journalism ethics to respond to new knowledge of the role of news media, and to legitimate criticisms of traditional approaches to journalism’s ethical problems. The morale is this: Journalism ethics is altered substantially once issues such as media power and cultural difference become central to its study.
This stress on cross-cultural analysis and power anticipates a second and related area where conceptual widening is needed—the need to construct a global journalism ethics. To be sure, there has been a reshaping of journalism ethics in recent decades. New aims and duties have been added to liberal theory, as noted above. There has been the addition of rigorous studies of media. However, this reshaping has paid insufficient attention to a major trend: the impact of the globalization of journalism on ethics.
This lack of attention is not surprising. Across the 400 years of modern journalism, from broadsides to blogs, its ethics has been parochial. It has been assumed that journalists serve the readers of a local newspaper, the audience for a regional news broadcast, or the citizens of a country. Most of the 400 codes of journalism ethics in the world today are for local, regional or national media. Little is said about whether journalists have a responsibility to citizens beyond one’s town or country. Journalism ethics was developed for a journalism of limited reach, whose public duties were assumed to stop at the border. However, in a global world, why not take the next step and define one’s public as readers within and without my country? Why not “go global” and talk about a global journalism ethics?
Some of the elements of a global ethics appear to exist. When we compare codes of journalism ethics internationally we see agreement on basic principles such as to report the truth, to avoid bias, to distinguish news and opinion, and to serve the public. When African journalists drew up the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press in 1991 (MISA 1991), they invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to promote press freedom on their continent. Already, there is a growing movement of scholars, journals, and books on global media ethics (Cooper, Christians, Plude, White & Thomas, 1989; Black & Barney, 2002; Ward & Wasserman, 2008). There exist a number of international declarations of news media principles. Of special note is the development of an international approach to the study of media communication and journalism. The studies provide a portrait of the “news people” around the world and how their media systems and values compare (Demers, 2007; Weaver, 1998).
However, it is possible to question the project of global journalism ethics. Why should we consider taking this audacious step? Is ethics not complicated enough without adding global concerns?
There are several reasons to “go global.” First, the news media is increasingly global. The facts are familiar. Media corporations are increasingly global enterprises. Technology gives news organizations the ability to gather information instantly from remote locations. The reach of the Al-Jazeera and CNN networks, for example, extends beyond the Arab world or the American public. The sufficiency of parochial ethics has been undermined by the globalization of news media. Journalism ethics will not be credible if it avoids engagement with these new complexities.
Second, global impact entails global responsibilities (McPhail, 2006; Seib, 2002; De Beer, 2004). Reports, via satellite or the Internet, reach people around the world and influence the actions of governments, militaries, and humanitarian agencies. Publication of cartoons of Muslim’s Prophet Mohammed in one paper in one country, Denmark, spread violence around the world. A parochial journalism can wreak havoc. Unless reported properly, North American readers may fail to understand violence in the Middle East. Jingoistic reports can portray other cultures as a threat. Biased reports may incite ethnic groups to attack each other. We need to consider the impact of journalism across borders. Global issues and the power of global media organizations call for a media ethics that is global in its principles and in its understanding of media. This “global responsibility” is not reflected in most journalism codes of ethics.
Third, a global journalism is required in a world where media bring together a plurality of religions and ethnic groups with varying values and agendas. Our world is not a cozy McLuhan village. In such a climate, we need to emphasize journalism as a bridge for understanding across cultures. Fourth, a global-minded journalism is needed to help citizens understand the daunting global problems of poverty, environmental degradation, technological inequalities and political instability. These problems require concerted global action, and the construction of new global institutions. Fifth and finally, a global ethics is needed to unify journalists in constructing a fair and informed media. Without global principles it is difficult to criticize media practices in other countries, including severe restrictions on the press and the Internet.
To recognize the urgency of a global ethics is only the start. To agree that news media have global responsibilities does not mean that we have a clear and defensible list of global duties for journalists around the world. To speak of a global media ethics is not to provide a systematic framework of principles, standards, and best practices. Moreover, the idea of global media ethics raises tough theoretical and practical questions. Does a global ethic require universal values accepted by all journalists? If so, are there universal values in journalism? How would such universals do justice to the cultural, political, and economic differences around the world? This “search” for global ethics faces the problem of how to do justice to both the particular and the universal (Ronning, 1994; Christians & Traber, 1997). Rao, for example, seeks ways to integrate “local” or “indigenous epistemologies” within global media ethics (Rao, 2007). Moreover, we said above that a cursory survey of the many codes of journalism ethics would find agreement on such values as reporting the truth. Yet, a survey would also find differences. Some media cultures emphasize more strongly than others such values as the promotion of social solidarity, not offending religious beliefs, and not weakening public support for the military. Even where media systems agree on a value, such as freedom of the press or social responsibility, they may interpret and apply such principles in different ways.
Therefore, many theoretical and practical obstacles confront the construction of a valid global journalism ethics. In the meantime, we can ask: What would a global ethics look like? Here is a rudimentary sketch, from my perspective. First, to develop a global ethics, journalists would need to adopt an attitude that places greater weight on their responsibilities to people beyond their borders. The attitude needed, I suggest, is ethical cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism does not mean being sophisticated in the ways of the world. It is an ancient ethical theory which began with the idea that people outside my tribe or city—foreigners—were human like me. Therefore, I owe them certain decencies, such as hospitality or perhaps the basic privileges of citizenship. The roots of cosmopolitanism go back to the stoics, Roman law, the Christian notion of a brotherhood of man, and Kant’s imperative (Kant, 1997) to treat all humans as “ends in themselves.” Cosmopolitan ethics asserts that our ethical behavior should be based on the equal value of all people, as members of a common humanity. The ethnicity or gender of a person is morally irrelevant to whether an individual or group comes under the protection of cosmopolitan principles, such as universal human rights. Cosmopolitanism (Brock & Brighouse, 2005) has received increasing attention because of the debate over the responsibilities of developed countries to the appalling poverty and illness on this planet. Nussbaum (1998), for instance, has put cosmopolitanism forward as an antidote to parochialism in ethics.
Cosmopolitanism in journalism implies fundamental changes in self-conception, in how journalists regard their “public,” and in the primacy of basic principles. Rather than see themselves as agents of a local public, journalists would see themselves as agents of a global public sphere. The goal would be a global media that challenges the distortions of tyrants and the abuse of human rights. Journalism’s contract with society would become a “multi-society” contract with citizens in many countries. Global objectivity would ask journalists to not allow their bias toward their town or country to distort reports on international issues. Moreover, a report would not be counted as accurate and balanced unless it included international sources and cross-cultural perspectives. Also, global journalism would reject extreme patriotism. In times of insecurity, a narrow-minded, patriotic news media support leaders who stampede populations into war, or the removal of civil rights. It was disturbing to see how some news organizations during the Iraq war so quickly shucked off their peacetime commitments to impartial reporting as soon as the drums of war started beating. Journalists serve their country in such times by providing independent reporting and global perspectives.
Not every story requires a global approach. However, there are many issues, such as military intervention, or climate change, or a fair world trading system that requires journalists to adopt the perspective of global justice and to consider what is best for the global community. What is at issue, then, is a gradual widening of editorial attitudes and standards—a widening of the vision that journalists have of their responsibilities.
Conclusion
Whither journalism ethics? It is possible to regard the current media revolution as a positive development, prompting a much-needed rethinking of journalism ethics. The clash of ideas may lead to the invention of a richer journalism ethics.
The future of journalism ethics depends on the successful completion of two large projects: (1) development of a richer theoretical basis for journalism ethics; and (2) development of a “mixed media ethics”—a more adequate set of practical newsroom-based norms for a multi-platform journalism with global reach. The first is a theoretical challenge, while the second is a more practical, normative question of altering newsroom norms and practices.
In this paper, I have only dealt with the first project. It requires the enrichment of liberal theory with other approaches to media theory. Ethicists also need to show how new theoretical approaches might change newsroom practice and journalism education. In short, journalism ethics should become more cosmopolitan in theory and practice.
Determining the content of a critical, global journalism ethics is a work-in-progress. Despite the difficult questions and daunting problems, the future of journalism ethics requires nothing less than the construction of a new, bolder, and more inclusive ethical framework for a multi-media, global journalism amid a pluralistic world.
