Media Ethics - Mass Communication - Print Media

MEDIA ETHICS

ETHICS:- Ethics also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality, such as what the fundamental semantic, ontological, and epistemic nature of ethics or morality is (meta-ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations (applied ethics), how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology), and what moral values people actually abide by (descriptive ethics).
MEDIA ETHICS:- The subdivision of practical ethics dealing with the specific ethical principles and standards of media, including broadcast media, film, theatre, the arts, print media and the internet. The field covers many varied and highly controversial topics, ranging from war journalism to Benetton advertising.

• Ethics of Journalism: The ethics of journalism is one of the most well-defined branches of media ethics, primarily because it is frequently taught in schools of journalism. News can manipulate and be manipulated. Governments and corporations may attempt to manipulate news media; governments, for example, by censorship, and corporations by share ownership. The methods of manipulation are subtle and many. Manipulation may be voluntary or involuntary. Those being manipulated may not be aware of this.

• Ethics of entertainment media: The depiction of violence and sex, and the presence of strong language. Ethical guidelines and legislation in this area are common and many media (e.g. film, computer games) are subject to ratings systems and supervision by agencies. An extensive guide to international systems of enforcement can be found under motion picture rating system. An increasingly common marketing tactic is the placement of products in entertainment media. The producers of such media may be paid high sums to display branded products. The practice is controversial and largely unregulated. Both advertising and entertainment media make heavy use of stereotypes. Stereotypes may negatively affect people's perceptions of themselves or promote socially undesirable behaviour. The stereotypical portrayals of men, wealth and ethnic groups are examples of major areas of debate.

Art is about the questioning of our values. Normative ethics is often about the enforcement and protection of our values. In media ethics, these two sides come into conflict. In the name of art, media may deliberately attempt to break with existing norms and shock the audience. The extent to which this is acceptable is always a hotbed of ethical controversy.

• Media and democracy: In democratic countries, a special relationship exists between media and government. Although the freedom of the media may be constitutionally preserve and have precise legal definition and enforcement, the exercise of that freedom by individual journalists is a matter of personal choice and ethics. Modern democratic government subsists in representation of millions by hundreds. For the representatives to be accountable, and for the process of government to be transparent, effective communication paths must exist to their constituents.

Today these paths consist primarily of the mass media, to the extent that if press freedom disappeared, so would most political accountability. In this area, media ethics merges with issues of civil rights and politics.

• Media ethics and the law: Like ethics the law seeks to balance competing aims. In most countries there are laws preventing the media from doing or saying certain things when this would unduly breach another person's rights. For instance, slander and libel are forms of defamation, a tort. Slander occurs when a person's good name is unfairly slurred. Libel is concerned with attacks on reputation through writing. A major area of conflict is between the public's "right to know", or freedom of the press, and individual's right to privacy. This clash often occurs regarding reporting into the private lives of public figures. There are restrictions in most countries on the publication of obscene material, particularly where it depicts nudity, desecration of religious objects or symbols (blasphemy), human remains or violent or sexual crime.