Why should journalists practice sound ethics?

Usually, responses can be divided into two broad
categories:

1. The moral incentive

• Journalists should be ethical because they see
  themselves as decent and honest human beings.
• To crave self-esteem, which is very natural
• To get the respect of others
• A psychic reward for doing something good-for
  don’t want to be known as someone who has exploited someone.

2. The practical incentive

• In the long term, it promotes news organizations’
  credibility and thus its acceptance in public.
• This translates into commercial success- just as
  a consumer would choose a product with a trusted brand name over a no-name
  alternative when seeking quality.

Defining Ethics

Ethics is a set of moral principles, a code-
often unwritten- that guides a person’s conduct. According to Michael Josephson, there are two aspects to ethics:

1. The first involves discerning right from wrong,
good from evil, and decency from impropriety.

2. The second involves committing to do what is
right, sound, and proper.

So ethics is about how we meet the challenge of
doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay.

According to Keith Woods:

Ethics is the pursuit of right when wrong is a
strong possibility

The origins of Ethical Theory

• The ethical theory evolved in ancient societies
  as a basis for justice and the orderly functioning of the group, a purpose it
  still serves today.
• Ten Commandments 1500BC- they were admonished not
  to steal, kill, or lie
• Ethics from Greek word- ethos- meaning character-
  a Greek citizen would be honest simply because it would be unthinkable to be
  dishonest
• Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato believed that: the
  individual, in living a virtuous life, would form part of an overall ethical
  community
• Socrates: the unexamined life is not worth
  living.
• Golden Rule: the essence of being an ethical
  person which is to consider the needs of others 
  Or Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

The criterion of reversibility as stated by Rush
M. Kidder:

• Bible(Mathew): all things whatsoever ye would
  that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the
  prophets.
• Jews(Talmud): that you hold as detestable do not
  do to your neighbor. That is the whole law: the rest is but commentary.
• Islam: None of you is a believer if he does not
  desire for his brother what he wishes for himself.
• Confucius(551-479 BCE) is undoubtedly the golden
  maxim: Do not do to others what we do not want them to do to us.

Transmitting a Society’s Ethical values

Over time values were passed down through
socialization- the new generation absorbed the importance of the community. Louis A. Day identifies four main conduits for
transmitting values

1. Family
2. Peer groups-friends etc.- a powerful urge to go
   with the crowd
3. Role models-famous people; or someone they knew
   personally- urged to emulate them
4. Societal institutions-media- drama, television
   ,cinema

How we fix our beliefs

Charles Peirce (1839-1914), an American
pragmatist, philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, explored how we know
what we think we know how we fix our beliefs. He concluded that individuals and
societies rely upon four basic and hierarchical ways of knowing.

1. Tenacity – merely believing in something out of
   blind prejudice or through unquestioned adherence to traditions- learned
   through our Parents, places of worship, teachers, coaches professional
   colleagues. Once we latch onto these simple, all-encompassing explanations, we
   use them automatically to define and resolve continuing problems and as
   shortcuts to handling new situations. Holding tenaciously and dogmatically to
   our beliefs is more accessible than grappling with troubling nuances. That is
   why dogmatic and visceral people make decisions quickly and seemingly with more
   certainty.
2. Authority – to accept ideas passed on to us by
   various authority figures- secular or religious person or institution, etc. the
   extent to which we tentatively or wholeheartedly accept opinions from authority
   figures says a lot about how open or closed-minded we are. Careful, rational
   filtering of ideas from authorities is a sign of mental and moral maturity;
   blind obedience and willful deference are not. In some environments, elders
   clarify that experience and opinions are to be challenged; authority serves as
   a form of social control. In other cases, an open environment encourages
   exploration and even tolerates some mistakes.
3. Intuition – beyond authority-based beliefs are the
   ones we generate by our intuition, best judgments. Through a wide variety of
   opinions and observations, we are running them through our filters- filters
   created by our particular lot in life, our professional backgrounds, our
   demographic(age, sex, gender, income, place of residence, etc), and
   psychographic variables(our values and motivations), our attentiveness or
   indifference our self-interests, etc.
4. Science – after we have transcended tenacity and
   authority and have come to rely on good intuition, what happens when the
   well-meaning impulses or one person are not in accord with the well-meaning
   intentions of others? What happens when good people see the world differently
   because their filters are dissimilar? How then do we reach a meaningful consensus?
   Peirce’s answer was to use the scientific method. Science does not decide until
   evidence is gathered; it asks to be objective in assessing ideas and
   experiences rather than jumping to conclusions. It says our opinions and
   conclusions should stand up to public scrutiny. In essence, we are describing
   Principled decision making.

Keywords

Ethics, Media and Ethics, Ethical Theory, Media, Sociology, Mass Communication, Sociology,