Lecture 8: Is this Ethical?

Today we had a guest lecturer, Dr Harrison, and he introduced the topic of ethics by drawing our attention to some ‘controversial’ ad campaigns. As he showed them to us we were asked to rate each on a scale of ethical to unethical and also whether they were in good taste or were downright tacky. After this activity he then asked us how we judged the ads on that scale. What makes things good or bad? What makes an output of media ethical or unethical? Who judges the difference between right and wrong?

Giving my personal answer of how I judged and how I think others judged the variety of ads, I’d say it was all about my personal values and what I was taught growing up to deem right and wrong. Take for example the Sam Kekovich ad that was shown. I find that ad to be in pretty poor taste. I wouldn’t say it is to the degree of being unethical but I certainly don’t think the creators focussed on making an ethical ad. Some of the statements and just the general…atmosphere, I guess, that the ad creates doesn’t appeal to me in any way. I know it’s a different story for many other Australians, because as Dr Harrison said, the ad has become somewhat of a legacy.

 

To relate this back to journalism he discussed three ethical theories which were:

• Deontology
• Consequentialism
• Virtue

Deontology is the one that follows rules and principles. These rules are external to the individual so all ethics codes on journalism, advertising, business, etc are deontological. This theory requires little independent thought and no strong character values because as long as you can comprehend the rules and stay within the guidelines you’d be fine.

Consequentialism focusses on the idea that all that matters is the outcome. It doesn’t matter how, for example, a piece of journalism was uncovered as long as it was ‘for the greater good’. This one seems a bit dodgy I think, as so many things could be conducted poorly throughout the process. But then again how can you define what ‘poor conduct’. I guess that is the very essence of this theory, nothing is deemed wrong along the so long as the final product will benefit the majority.

Virtue ethics is what Dr Harrison said was essentially, the most important theory type to understand when it comes to being a journalist. Sure, it isn’t what the journalists’ codes are about, but the very backbone of this theory is that “goodness” comes from good habits of character. Courage, justice, temperance and prudence are all internal values that guide you in your work. Compare these internal values to that of deontology where you are given the guidelines and there is no need for you to think for yourself. In order to be an efficient and truly great journalist these values must be second nature to you and you won’t learn them from memorising any code.

There was a little controversy back in  2011 about whether The Australian had acted unethically when they received sponsorship by a pharma industry group that directly funded their health journalism. The Australian insisted they maintained editorial independence throughout the partnership but it was heavily questioned by others in the media saying that the drug industry having any influence in public discussion was a dangerous thing. There was sympathy though towards the idea that journalism must be funded one way or another, but perhaps it was a poor choice by the newspaper. Crikey goes into more detail here. 

That’s me done for Lecture 8.