WEEK 2: INFORMATION ETHICS 2.

Compatible with democracy and its emphasis on

rational government
Journalism with the lofty ideal, communication of truth. - Citizens could arrive at some shared truth of
o Compounding the modern problem of the how they could govern themselves
shifting nature of truth is the changing media - Check and balances among the estates
audience
o Telling the truth becomes something that V. Pragmatists (John Dewey, George Herbert
requires learning how to recognize truth and Mead, Charles Sanders Pierce, and William
conveying it in the least distorted manner James)
possible.  The perception of truth depended on
how it was investigated and on who
A Changing View of Truth was doing the investigating
I. Pre-Socratic Greek  Truth is relative
 Alethea (truth) as encompassing  Knowledge and reality were not fixed
what humans remember, linking by but instead were the result of an
truth and remembrance (memory); evolving stream of consciousness and
important in oral culture learning.
 Discarded once words and ideas  Challenged objectivity, and in the
were written down process, journalistic product: the
 Television and the computer allow individual news story and the media
viewers to hear words and see ecosystem it emerged
them, assuming that it closely  However, if objectivity is defined as a
corresponds to reality method of information collection— a
II. Plato systematic approach to gathering
 Linking truth to human rationality “facts” from many points of view—
and implied that it can be captured then this philosophical development
only through intellect provides support or defining
 equated truth with a world of pure objectivity as a process rather than as
form, a world to which human a result.
beings had only indirect access
III. Medieval Theologians
 Truth only revealed by God/church
IV. The Enlightenment (Milton)
 Competing notions of the truth
should be allowed to coexist, with
the ultimate truth eventually
emerging
 Which modern journalism borrows
VI. Postmodern
its notion of truth
 The concept of truth is devoid of
 Developed the correspondence
meaning, context is everything and
theory, which asserts that truth
that meaning cannot exist apart
should corresponds to external
from context, directly opposing
facts/observations
fact-based journalism
 Truth has become increasingly tied
VII. Convergence/Coherence of Truth
to what is written down, what can
 Truth is discovered through
be empirically verified, what can be
determining which set of facts
perceived by the human senses.
forms a coherent mental picture of
 It is a truth uniquely suited to the
events and ideas investigated
written word, for it links what is
through a variety of methods
written with what is factual,
 Multimedia journalism as a
accurate, and important.
response
Truth and Objectivity
Defining and Constructing the News
Objectivity – way of knowing that connects human
perception with facts and then knowledge
“We define first and then see” (Walter Lippmann, 1922)
o A process of information collection
- We tend to pick out what our culture has
o For journalists, refusing to allow individual bias
already defined for us, and then perceive it
to influence what they report and how they in the form stereotyped for us by our
cover it culture
Advantages The harm in objectivity
1. Clean up journalism’s act with set of standards 1. Journalists bringing something to the message
where seemingly none had existed before that changes what they see and what they report
- Avoid yellow journalism/fabricated stories (stereotypes, biases, prejudices)
- Ensured that news columns would remain
unoffended long enougb to glance at the ads
 2. News routines use received truth as official
truth, and only brave journalists dare depart
from it
3. Strict adherence to objectivity could bias news
coverage
a. Biased against the watchdog role, only
relying to official sources propagating
to established power holders
b. Biased against independent thinking,
forced to be neutral
c. Biased against responsibility, only
compelled to report and not responsible
to creating
i. The para-ideology of the media
– (Search meaning) :
ethnocentrism, altruistic
democracy, responsible
capitalism, individualism,
emphasis on the need for and
maintenance of social order,
and leadership
ii. Entering news bubbles/echo
chambers where their pre-
existing beliefs are reinforces
or amplified by voices that
confirm them instead of being
challenged, called journalism of
affirmation
 Distorting discourse by
limiting the scope of
public discussion
4. The press is in internal contradiction
a. Must be neutral but investigative
b. Must be disengaged but have an impact
c. Must be fair minded but have an edge

On Ethics of Deception
Sissela Bok (1978)
o the human need for truth in order to live an
authentic life will triumph over the short- term
need to ease difficult questions and difficult Ethical News Values
relationships by everything from fibbing to 1. Accuracy – using the correct facts and the right
telling whoppers words and putting things in context
Lying – starts out in the moral deficit column 2. Confirmation – writing articles that are able to
1. The lie must be states withstand scrutiny inside and outside the
2. The liar must knowingly provide information newsroom
that they are aware is incorrect or wrong 3. Tenacity – knowing when a story is important
3. The lie must be told in order to gain power over enough to require additional effort, both
the person who is being lied to personal and institutional
Disinformation 4. Dignity – leaving the subject of a story as much
1. It is stated---publication on the internet self-respect as possible
2. Those who produce disinformation---or sets its 5. Reciprocity – treating others as you wished to be
production in motion through the use of treated
bots/other technological tools---are aware that 6. Sufficiency – allocating adequate resources to
it is wrong or inaccurate important issues
3. It is developed and distributed to gain power 7. Equity – seeking justice for all involved in
through wealth controversial issues and treating all sources and
sucjects equally
8. Community – valuing social cohesion
9. Diversity – covering all segments of the audience
fairly and adequately
10. Transparency – the cornerstone of the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting” new
standards and practices policy
WEEK 3: PRIVACY

Surveillance Capitalism – characterized by asymmetries

in knowledge and the power to retain that knowledge
and repurpose it to make a profit
o People don’t own their data
o Provides “Want to know” information with
information that may never been requested by
the end user
o The end user is the real endpoint in the
economic transaction
Sanctuary – physical place where individual privacy can
be sustained

Privacy as an Ethical Construct

o Linked to natural rights we possess by being
human  Innermost – alone with your secrets,
o Describes the boundaries of the access people fantasies, hopes, reconstructed
have to us, what people can know about our memories, and the rest of the
information/data psychological “furniture” we bring to
Two Components our lives
1. Control over information about the self  Second – occupy with one other person;
 Who gets to know things about you you plus one
 Who gets to share/spread that  Third – others whom you are very close
information with
2. Control over the context where the information is  Intrusion is when this control is taken
shared from you
 Among family/friends? Within your  Doxxing provides one sort of
whole community? When collected in injury, but as information
exchange for a service spreads and is used in a variety
of ways, the original injury is
Privacy as shared responsibility repeated and sometimes
o A matter of reciprocal trust intensified
o Individuals have to learn when to share or  media practitioners knowingly
withhold information, while the community has or unknowingly intrude on
to learn when to avert its eyes, avoiding the other’s privacy as we seek
unwanted gaze information
 “injury of seeing” and of “being seen”  awareness will allows
 moral obligation “to avert your gaze” us to consider the
 Fear of being observed causes us to rights and needs of
partially shut down our lives where we others as well as the
are celebrating, mourning, or just going demands of society
about our daily pattern. (newsworthiness)
 More public, less intimate with less
Secrecy vs. Privacy control over your information
Secrecy – blocking information intentionally to prevent
others from learning, possessing, using, or revealing it Discretion: whether to reveal private information
o Concealment of information o “Intuitive ability to discern what is and is not
o Not everything private is a secret intrusive and injurious” (Bok, 1983)
Privacy – determining who will obtain access to the o a reporter’s discretion remains the sole
information gatekeeper between that information and a
o Who has control over the information that public that might need the information or might
becomes public merely want the information
o Control over who has access to your circles of o Journalists: everything is on-the-record unless
intimacy otherwise specified – reflected in machine
learning
Why should we know private/secret information?
1. Right to know – legal, not ethical, construct
 SECTION 3. Access to information.
Every Filipino shall have access to
information, official records, public
records and to documents and papers
pertaining to official acts, transactions
or decisions, as well as to government
 research data used as basis for policy 1. individual control over the bits and bytes of
development. private information is much more difficult to
 When an argument is framed in terms accomplish
of right to know, it reduces the 2. Linked privacy with a capitalist market
journalist to an ethical legalism: I will economy, on the one hand, and the interventions
do precisely what the law allows. of the welfare state, on the other.
2. Need to know – philosophy, valuable to the
functioning of people’s daily lives The Need for Privacy
 Often what is really meant when “right 1. Develop a sense of self without fear of ridicule of
to know” is claimed outsiders
 Requires argument, ethical justification 2. Society needs it as shield against the power of
 Ethical dilemmas in the media often the state
involve the boundary between the right 3. Society needs it as shield against internet sites
and the need to know. that demand large sums of data about us
 Caught “Between what the law allows
and what … consciences permit” and the Melding fields: combining law, philosophy, and
law is always post hoc: Legal remedies economics
occur only after harm has been inflicted o The concept privacy is not a priori right, it can
 Traditional privacy as the right be overridden by other, consequential claims
to keep certain personal facts o algorithms attempt to create an artificial “self”
from public view indirectly by examining purchasing and
 Contemporary privacy searching decisions
recognizes a person’s right to o a thick theory of the self and the traditional
engage in personal activities concepts of market- driven economics do coexist
without governmental within contemporary culture
interference  constitutes a contested commodity, one
 When an argument is framed in that market forces may intrude upon
terms of need to know, it means but that are incompletely accounted for
that counterbalancing forces have by examining only market transactions.
been weighed and that bringing the  privacy is a right that individuals can
information to light is still the most chose to trade away, or to retain, based
ethical act. on individual needs and desires
3. Want to know – based on curiosity o privacy is related to human experience but the
 Least ethically compelling rationale concept itself is not relative
 Journalists— especially bloggers— o Privacy’s moral weight also is not proportional
have become sources for much to the number of people who are aware of the
“want to know” information initial invasion
Privacy and reciprocity – like a social contract, requiring
one’s own moral reasoning John Rawls and the Veil of Ignorance
Distributive Justice – utilitarian in nature, justice should
Information Privacy: shifting the focus of the act be equated with fairness and to achieve it, one must
o surveillance capitalism shifts the concept of exercise the veil of ignorance
harm away from an act that is based exclusively Veil of ignorance – the community must consider the
in individuals and instead can focus on groups of options behind a veil of ignorance
individuals o Everyone starts as equals
o privacy is neither a right to secrecy nor a right to o Behind it, rational peoples would be willing to
control information, but rather a right that make and follow decisions when individual
individuals have to “control . . . the appropriate distinctions are laid aside
flow of personal information” in a variety of o Arguments would be free of bias that comes
contexts (Nissenbaum, 2010) from points of view
o context-relative informational norms illustrated o Consensus is not required, nor expected,
by the release of information affected by o Reflective equilibrium where some inequalities
individual history and professional roles are allowed, summoning considered moral
judgment - balancing the liberties of various
Harms of Privacy Invasion stakeholders while protecting the weaker party
1. Informational Harm (identity theft) allows for an exploration of all of the issues
2. Informational inequality – amassing data involved
without consent Two values emerging behind the veil
3. Informational injustice – transferring data 1. Individual liberty is maximized
without contextual information a. Liberty of all will be valued equally
4. Encroachment on moral autonomy – hindering b. Freedom of the press becomes equal to
our capacity to shape our moral biographies freedom from intrusion into private life
2. Weaker parties will be protected
The role of technology
 a. Few participants would make ethical o Problems
decisions that might not be in the  how it is expressed cannot be
interest of the weak universalized or generalized within an
b. Participants would be forced to weigh individual life or a particular society
actual and potential harm that  multiple loyalties that professionals
journalists could inflict on people who must maintain produce an inevitable
are less powerful clash, conflicts of interest

Paternalism and privacy Loyalty as principle

o Pater suggests the relationship a father would o Even an unvirtuous person could reason his way
have with his family into loyal and ethical choices
1. As a provider  Ethical principles are deontological
2. As a decision-maker of family’s well-being (rule-based) and can be followed
3. As a benevolent authority who wants what’s without necessary virtues
best for you o even a person of strong ethical character could
o Paternalistic view suggests that whether you make mistakes by failing to think through issues
want something private/public should be based of loyalty
on what’s best for you/for the collective (no) o Which loyalty should you “be loyal” to?
o Non-paternalistic view suggests that whether o Conflicting loyalties can compromise your
you want something private/public is your credibility
prerogative (yes) Alternatives/How to solve
o Persson & Hansson (2003) propose a middle 1. Withdrawing from the activity creating the
ground: Privacy has a core and a discretionary conflict/appearance of conflict
part (subjective) 2. Publicizing the elements of the conflict and let
 Core privacy extends anything that you others decide
are willing to have all humans consider
private Loyalty as social act
 Discretionary privacy is where the o Be loyal as the only ethical guide we’d ever need,
attitude of person determines whether but to a cause (Josiah Royce, 1908)
intrusion occurs  The act becomes the choice
o Privacy as a normative concept, (yes) a societal  The choice of not being loyal to
norm, considered right, and has to be protected anything is an act of loyalty
but (no) some cases where o Could be cultivated by habit
protecting/increasing it are morally indefensible o Might be directed to bad outcomes
(e.g. uncovering crime/misconduct, working o Choose causes in harmony to those of the
with a vulnerable person/person in danger) community
 Normatively laden not an absolute  Emanating the Filipino virtue ethics’
value, that someone has a legitimate Loob and Kapwa
claim to privacy about something does o Hobbes’ idea of social contract
not always overrule reasons to intrude  Self-preservation over the crown
on that privacy.  Social loyalties – Journalism: to readers,
audiences, and democracy
WEEK 4: LOYALTY Loyalty and Media
o Media accused of disloyalty when they are just
Loyalty - “perseverance in a committed association” fulfilling their watchdog role
o When social media executives decide to block, o Where your ultimate loyalties lie should help
label, or promote certain kinds of content you resolve your conflicting loyalties
Loyalty as a virtue Four loyalties journalists have (Macy, 2001)
o Capable of nobility and ignominy within the 1. Shared humanity
same set of facts 2. Professional practice
 Individually practiced, means different 3. Employment
things to different people (Golden 4. Civil society/public life
Mean)
 Should be transparent, can be The Potter Box
discarded/affirmed – multiple loyalties 1. Understand the facts of the case
could be sustained/jeopardized 2. Outline the values inherent in the decision
3. Apply relevant philosophical principles
4. Articulate your judgment of the case
extreme autonomy extreme
loyalty Loyalty as a normative concept
o Allows epistemic partiality, loyalty to one as the o Our definitions of loyalty are almost always
expense of others social, involving relationships
 The virtuous individual is expected to
understand loyalty ethically
  Disloyalty is judged by the other, means, economic means become not
hypothetical or real just the driver but also the decider of
 Tied up to the idea of reciprocity who speaks and how big a microphone
o Autonomy and loyalty that person wields.
 The choice to be loyal/disloyal might 3. The vision of the purpose of political power
depend on your autonomy from the  the purpose of government was to
group provide security to the populace so that
 Danger: blind/unthinking loyalty it would act in such a way as to conform
to a higher authority.
WEEK 5: DEMOCRACY  there are no clear guidelines for the
The Withering Fourth Estate news media when one element in a
o Media organizations are expected to act as powerful system ignores political norm
watchdogs on the government, performing as
the role of fourth estate Disinformation: the transformation to junk news
 the human beings who animate those o fake news and disinformation linked to
institutions need an overarching loyalty philosophical definitions of lying.
to democracy itself rather than a  Disinformation is driven by profit, lying
particular policy view or form of is done to gain power (Sissela Bok,
political leadership 1978)
 the fourth estate as an institution was  Lies in 2020 become a political framing
trying to hold other institutions in the called meta-conspiracy theory QAnon
same political system to account  fake news became news that
Society’s three “estates” you didn’t like, news that arose
1. the church/clergy (spiritual authority) from outside your “bubble,”
2. the nobles (secular authority) and news that may have
3. the common people (mass authority) questioned your very identity.
Branches of government o Junk news is news that can be a
1. Executive sensationalization of some facts, the substitution
2. Legislative of trivial content for more important and
3. Judicial consequential information, or an attempt to
provide opinion without weighing all of the
o journalism functions as part of a political system evidence
that relies on other systemic actors in order to  Alternate facts, stories that ignore
achieve its goal of contributing to self- evidence, content that function as
government clickbait rather genuine attempt to
 continued importance of news media inform
 “bad” content that takes up so much
bandwidth on the internet and so much
journalistic effort to debunk
o
WEEK 6: SOCIAL JUSTICE

WEEK 7: STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION

o Seamless connections between advertising and
public relations
o novel ways to get their messages to
“eyeballs”— or people acting in their
roles as consumers
Why the general public is skeptical on media
o active audience not only buys products
organizations?
or services but expects to be able to
1. Humanity is in the middle of an epistemological
evaluate those services and products
shift
o Persuasion – short, highly visual, and
 we do not have a grasp on how to
summarize the complexity of truth in a intentionally vague; glorifies consumerism at
way that spans points of view, methods the expense of the community and warps non-
of inquiry, or the causes that such persuasive content (institution)
complexity must serve o You are the product
2. The Bill of Rights (and its First Amendment) was o Cognitive dissonance – message and action give
approved as a mechanism to further the larger conflicting and uncomfortable signals
goals of governing (unique to American culture) o Purchase would restore balance
 the goal of free speech in the American o Existential crisis
context is the promotion of justice o Empowerment as stratcomm goal
within political community.
 In a country that constitutionally cannot
regulate speech by governmental
Behavioral marketing (behavioral targeting) – used to commerce and tax dollars, and finally those who
increase the effectiveness of advertising by tapping into depend on advertising- supported news to be
data created by users as they surf the web. participatory citizens in a democracy.
o Accumulated wealth of data from users’ actions
on the internet, wherein targeted advertising TARES Test (Ethical Test)
takes place o checklist of questions to determine the ethical
worthiness of the message
Fake ads o added advocacy to an ethical evaluation of
o 2016, Russian companies with ties to the public- relations messages
Kremlin purchased divisive, inflammatory, and  “understanding and valuing the
false ads on Facebook and Twitter to tip the perception of publics inside and outside
presidential election to Donald Trump organizations” and communicating them
o Facebook use algorithm instead of sale  Supporters: any misleading information
representatives, creating ad categories put out by strategic communications
automatically based on what users share and professionals will be somehow “self-
their online activity corrected” by the gatekeepers of the
media or by the self- righting
Approaches to Technology “marketplace of ideas.”
1. Efficiency  Critics: (1) easily morphs in distortion
a. Technology raises no ethical issues, but and lies and (2) long-term health of
how it is put to use enterprises is ill serves by “spin” and
2. Embedded with values better serves by honest, timely
a. Technology is at core a system of values communication
that must be understood before any
decision to adopt a specific technology
can be made

Thinking About the Audience

Behaviorist Approach – media could act as “hypodermic
needle” or a “magic bullet,” sending a stimulus/message
to an unresisting audience (persuasion theory)
o Powerful effects theorists – stimulus-response
model, poor predictor of human behavior
T – Truthfulness
Cognitive Approach – people strain toward cognitive o A message would pass the test if it meets a
balance, most comfortable when everything is in genuine human need to provide truthful
harmony; “symmetry” information, even if some facts are omitted
o Balance theories – stress on tendencies to strive o Practitioners should be very its truthfulness
for cognitive balance A – Authenticity
 No consequences to the problem, no o Do it with the right attitude, with sincerity
lack of balance, and subsequently no o Would you buy your own reasoning about the
sale uses and quality of the product?
 Individually focused approach – caveat o Disclosure – communication policies built on
emptor (let the buyer beware) – used in principles of openness and transparency;
advertising providing information about who is paying for
o Cognitive dissonance - state where a message the message and who stands to profit from its
and an action give conflicting and uncomfortable success
signals. R – Respect
 The desire to eliminate that dissonance o For the receiver of persuasive message
is a strong one, sometimes strong o “Am I willing to take full, open, and personal
enough to influence purchasing responsibility for the content of this ad?”
behavior and voting habits E – Equity
 Advertisers use this theory. o Comprehensible to the receiver
o Access to information equalized an individual’s
Anthropological Approach – human rationality is equal to ability to participate in the marketplace of ideas
daily experience, language, and symbols; culture and S – Socially Responsible
personal experiences balance rationality o Emphasizes social ethics, social justice
o Caveat emptor is morally unsustainable o Process whether public-relations advocacy
impedes or contributes to the robust functioning
Advertising of the marketplace of ideas (decision-making)
o the ethical goal of advertising should be the
empowerment of multiple stakeholders— from Vulnerable Audiences
those who need to buy, those who need to sell, o Large, heterogenous audiences
those who live in a community fuelled by
 o Children are not assumed to be autonomous o Ethics shopping – mixing and matching ethics to
moral actors match what you are already doing rather than
o Ethnic consumers genuine evaluation
o Teenage girls o Ethical shirking – becoming less and less ethical,
o Adults who are minorities need special from given perceived low return on ethical behavior
advertising o Ethics as avoidance of ethics – way to justify
 Ads abusing the trust between consumer current practices and avoid stricter regulation
and advertiser have consequences: (1) o Greenwashing – exaggerated claims of
products may not sell or may become sustainability in order to gain market share
the target of regulation (2) cynicism and  Lack of transparency
societal distrust increase.
 Buyers may resort to avoiding Timnit Gebru – former co-lead of Google’s AI ethics team
advertising itself rather than using o Allegedly fired in Dec 2020 over a paper re: risks
advertising to help make better decisions of big natural language processing models
Risks of language AI
Journalism and StratComm 1. Environmental cost
o For client: public-relations practitioners offer 2. Lack of control over machine training – we
free access to audience; For newspapers: they cannot control what it will learn, lost of cultural
offer free news to publishers context/nuance, homogenization of language
3. Research opportunity cost
How they define news? 4. Easy to use for deception, disinformation
Public-relations Journalists (Journalism)
professional (Advertising) Autonomy – key principle at the heart of many debates
Lack of breaking news is Breaking news is the around AI
newsworthy news 1. Privacy
advertisers might try to Commercial Press Model: 2. Consent
influence content because 3. Free, unbiased decision-making
they serve as the primary media organizations
source of income for the almost always report and AI in the media
mass media distribute news at a loss, o A tool to help media practitioners improve their
instead making their creativity
money by selling readers,
viewers, or listeners to 5you’s (cinq) model of Kim Jung Gi work
advertisers. o Used an open-source AI, Stable diffusion
o Anbyone can build their own generator, with
images from wnywhare, without asking the
Issues owner
1. Use ad dollars to influence editorial content AI and your data
2. Native advertising - sponsor- funded content that Machine-washing
matches the form and editorial and design 1. Vague language giving the appearance
function of news content
Is technology is value-free?
How to battle it? Synergy - notion that consumers should  Just use responsibly
receive multiple messages from distinct sources, thereby  It has innate value
increasing sales or public perception of issues.  “a system of values”
 )Jacques Ellul
Sources of Professional Responsibilities (Louis Hodges, o Consequence for fai
1986)
1. Assigned – employee to employer Antitrust – laws that aim to prevent pooling of
2. Contracted – each party agree to assume power/control over resources
responsibilities and fulfil them  Trust is an arrangement enabling property to be
3. Self-imposed - individual moral actor takes on held by for the benefit of some other
responsibilities for reasons indigenous to each person/persons
individual o A form of monopoly
a. duty to the truth and fidelity to the
public good 1. Promote fair competition in business
2. Prevent mergers that reduce competition
WEEK 8: VISUAL MEDIA 3. Protect consumers from anticompetitive
Ethics washing – projecting an ethical image business practices
o Promoting friendly AI while selling surveillance
capitalism WEEK 9: MEDIA ECONOMICS
o Ethics theatre – putting a show
Market Economy
 o Ideally, goods and services change hands and no 4. to present and clarify the goals and values of
one gets hurt society; and
o Economic language, where everything must be 5. to provide citizens with full access to the day’s
marketed or incentivised, has not only crowded intelligence.
out moral thinking but sometimes changed our
conception of what it means to have a good life: Power Elite (C. Wright Mills, 1956)
to have a life with authentic flourishing o the ruling class of a democratic society
[Aristotle] (Sandel, 2012) o economically powerful institutions join them as
mass media become enormous
Objections against everything being a subject of o Power is found not only in the halls of
commerce (Sandel, 2012) government but also on Wall Street. And power
1. Fairness – ex. hiring someone to line up for a is found not only in money or armies but also in
free show is unfair and coercive; no recourse to information.
change the system that emerges unless o Media organizations, precisely because they
participants become unwilling have become multinational corporations engaged
2. Capacity to fuel corruption – ex. paying money in the information business, are deeply involved
to forgive sins in this power shift.

Moneyball Media Conglomerates

o Will only take you so far; experiences are not o Media are predominantly corporate-owned
equivalent and publicly traded with them
o Money does not incentivize better behavior o Most local media outlets are owned by five
o Sandel argues that concepts like altruism, multinational corporations, with attempt to
generosity, solidarity and civic duty, unlike gain market efficiencies
traditional economists who argue that they are
scarce, are like muscles that grow with repeated WEEK 10: ART AND ENTERTAINMENT
use. WEEK 11: MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND CARE

Social Responsibility Theory of the Press ETHICS OF CARE

o Hutchins Commission, funded by Henry Luce o Classical Philosophy
[Time magazine] (1940) o Thought experiment, coming up with
o envisioned a day when an active recipient of ethical theory first and use it in real life
news and information was satisfied by a socially o Feminist Theory
responsible press o Lived experiences first
o gives little attention to modern media o Whether women should abort the child
economics they are carrying
 there was also an unwillingness to link  Decisions involved reflection
economic and political power for fear of on intention and co
being labeled Marxist (communism) o Doing what is more compassionate
 does not deal with the realities of o Gilligan disagreed with implications that women
concentrated economic power, are inferior to men
particularly in an era when information o Hume on sympathy
has become a valuable commodity. o Emotion (moral sentiments) in ethics
 McCarthyism – bullying, baseless o Decide ethical course of action after
charges, faked evidence, often against reflecting on emotional response to
opponents (tagged as communists) natural experience
o Relived because ewe become more
 PH was just emerging from WWII and
pluralistic/relative as a society
US colonization – hour history of red- Communitarianism – we are born into a acommunity so
tagging stems from this era we should consider how our individual ethical decisions
 Created a climate that made it h arf to might affect it
recognize the problem of economic
power Moral development in ethics of care
1. Moral responsibility = care of other before self
2. Recognition of rights, including rights of self
Five functions on media to the society 3. Movement from concerns about goodness toward
1. to provide a truthful, comprehensive, and concerns about truth
intelligent account of the day’s events in a a. Be able to speak in “Two different
context that gives them meaning; moral languages,” rights =
2. to serve as a forum for exchange of comment and responsibilities
criticism;
3. to provide a representative picture of constituent Women’s ways of knowing
groups in society; o Cognitive (from childhood)
 o Education linked to scores on moral
development tests

Nussbaum’s Nussbaum’s capabilities approach

1. Justice: distribution of opportunities
2. Communication as a acapability that facilitates
humans’ and society’s development
a. “in the service of the moral
imagination”
3. Suggests that media preofessionals consider both
the individual and the institution when they make
ethical decisions
4. Help people the citizens they can be; media
promoting human capabilities