Disrupting Journalism Ethics

Radical Change on the Frontier of Digital Media

Stephen J A Ward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138895744
• eBook ISBN: 9781351716154
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Disrupting Journalism Ethics sets out to disrupt and change how we think about journalism and its ethics. The book contends that long-established ways of thinking, which have come down to us from the history of journalism, need radical conceptual reform, with alternate conceptions of the role of journalism and fresh principles to evaluate practice. Through a series of disruptions, the book undermines the traditional principles of journalistic neutrality and "just the facts" reporting. It proposes an alternate philosophy of journalism as engagement for democracy. The aim is a journalism ethic better suited to an age of digital and global media.

As a philosophical pragmatist, Stephen J. A. Ward critiques traditional conceptions of accuracy, neutrality, detachment and patriotism, evaluating their capacity to respond to ethical dilemmas for journalists in the 21st century. The book proposes a holistic mindset for doing journalism ethics, a theory of journalism as advocacy for egalitarian democracy, and a global redefinition of basic journalistic norms. The book concludes by outlining the shape of a future journalism ethics, employing these alternative notions.

Disrupting Journalism Ethics is an important intervention into the role of journalism today. It asks: what new role journalists should play in today's digital media world? And what new mind-set, new aims, and new standards ought jounalists to embrace? The book aims to persuade—and provoke—ethicists, journalists, students, and members of the public to disrupt and invent.

1
Why disrupt?

This book examines how we think about journalism, and how to change it. It asks: what new role should journalists play in today’s digital media world? What new mindset, new aims, and new standards ought journalists to embrace?

The italicized words – should, ought – indicate that this is a book about journalism ethics. Journalism ethics is not difficult to define. Journalism ethics is the responsible use of the freedom to publish; it is the study and application of the norms that should guide responsible, public journalism. That is the easy part. The hard part is saying what “responsible” means in general – what principles and stances? – and, what it means in particular – how to apply these norms to complex situations in daily journalism. Saying what the ethics of journalism should be is doubly difficult because of rapidly changing media, new practitioners, new values, and new practices. Today, journalism ethics is a problem, a zone of contention.

Why start with how we think? Because, as a philosophical pragmatist, I am interested in the consequences of beliefs, i.e., how we think and arrive at decisions, and what difference that makes in the world. To trace the consequences, one must be able to identify the beliefs. One must be a philosophical “detective,” noting that certain ideas are at work below the surface of our actions and thinking, as unstated assumptions.

The hypothesis

The general hypothesis of the book is that journalism ethics needs radical conceptual reform – alternate conceptions of the role of journalism and fresh principles to evaluate practice. These new ideas need to be brought together into a comprehensive perspective that explains what responsible journalism means in a digital, media world. The hypothesis contends that long-established ways of thinking, which have come down to us from the history of journalism, need to be disrupted and replaced by better ways of thinking. Strict adherence to traditional perspectives discourages bolder thinking and the development of new models.

The ethical problems cannot be properly addressed by minor reformulation of existing precepts. No doubt, after reform, some major principles will remain, such as truth-telling and verification, but even those that remain will have to be reinterpreted and reapplied to current issues. Reform will fail if it occurs in a piecemeal, ad hoc manner, modifying a norm here and responding to a problem there. We need to dig deep, intellectually. The future of journalism ethics depends on creative thinkers who overcome entrenched ways of thinking through critique and new proposals. We need to throw off the weight of journalistic tradition. It is time to be philosophically radical, to rethink journalism ethics from the ground up.

To support the hypothesis, I need to do two large things in this book: (1) to say what those long-established ways of thinking are, and why they need to be critiqued and (2) to say what a new journalism ethics should look like. In the rest of this Introduction, I orientate the reader by explaining why we need to disrupt and by sketching the argument to come.

When disrupt?

To morally interpret a practice is to explain the point of the practice. The point is the ethical aim of the practice, e.g., the way that law aims at justice and medicine aims at health of the body. As Dworking states: “A participant interpreting a social practice … proposes a value for the practice by describing some scheme of interests or goals or principles the practice can be taken to serve or express or exemplify.”¹

A moral interpretation is a moral ideology. By ideology, I mean a system of ideas that help us to understand, accurately or inaccurately, some object or activity in the world.² There are political, moral, economic, and religious ideologies. Ideologies are practical. They are intended to be used for guiding conduct. A moral ideology for journalism is a system of aims and norms that guide conduct according to some view of the point of the practice – the practice at its best. The history of journalism is redolent with moral interpretations: the journalist as neutral reporter of facts; the journalist as reformer or revolutionary; the journalist as the elixir of democracy.

To disrupt journalism ethics, then, is to disrupt one or more of the dominant moral ideologies of journalism. One disrupts the normal functioning of a moral ideology by questioning its goals, challenging its value judgments, exposing its dubious assumptions, showing how ineffective the ideology is in guiding decisions, and by offering an alternate interpretation.

Disruption has two related parts, like two sides of a coin: deconstruction and reconstruction. Deconstruction is the analytical task of taking moral ideologies of journalism apart and critiquing their component ideas. Reconstruction is the synthetic task of putting ideas together to form an alternate moral view.

Disruption is not always necessary. There are skills, such as plumbing or flying airplanes, where it would be out of place to call for an intellectual revolution and a new ideology. Even in highly intellectual activities, such as science, there is a time for major reform and a time when it is not needed. Historian of science Thomas Kuhn said the sciences alternate between “normal” and “revolutionary” periods.³ During normal science, most scientists agree on the basic methods, aims, and theories of their discipline. At other times, disagreement arises, and a lack of consensus on fundamentals prevails. New ideas come forward. The science enters a revolutionary period. Many things can undermine consensus, such as the emergence of a major new theory, new practices, new instruments, and failed experiments.

How do we know when a dominant moral ideology of journalism has been undermined and journalism ethics has entered a revolutionary period? When two things happen: (a) the main ideas of the ideology are disputed, rejected, or ignored in practice; there is serious fragmentation in ethical belief and (b) the ideology is not useful in addressing new practices and new problems, especially during times of rapid change. In sum, an ideology is in trouble when it struggles to be a widely respected, effective normative guide for practice. At this point, disruption is a valid option.

Why disrupt now?

I advocate disruption because the field of journalism ethics, overall, satisfies the conditions noted above. Journalism ethics has switched from normal to revolutionary mode. Disagreement is widespread, and there is a lack of consensus on fundamentals such as the primary aim of journalism. Historically, we are in the fifth revolution in journalism ethics since the creation of the modern news press in 17th-century Europe.⁴

What is the primary cause of this fragmentation? It is the digital media revolution, a revolution in media of unprecedented proportions. The revolution consists of three large factors: (1) the rise of digital media allowing citizens to publish and practice journalism, far from the professional newsrooms where journalism ethics began; (2) the rise of extreme populism and intolerant groups empowered by technologies that spread misinformation, polluting the public sphere; and (3) a global public sphere. News media are now global in reach, impact, and content as they report on global issues or events, whether the issue is immigration, climate change, or international security.

All three factors create turmoil in the ethics of journalism and weaken traditional values.

First, accessible digital media means new forms of journalism and new practitioners with varied values and aims. Citizens have access to publishing technology that can “do” journalism in two ways: citizens can regularly or randomly commit “acts of journalism” by posting information on events or commenting on issues. Or, they can use the techniques of journalism, e.g., dramatic narratives and images, to promote whatever cause they support. Many of these media workers lack knowledge of existing principles of journalism or care little for ethics; or, they assert that they work according to their own, and different, values.

Today, there is barely a principle or aim that goes unquestioned. New forms of journalism can be emotive and perspectival, and openly partisan. Traditional concepts, such as news objectivity and neutrality, are rejected. New areas of practice call for new ethical norms, such as norms for participatory journalism – where citizens are part of the news process.

When the aims of journalism are raised, a plurality of kinds of journalist are up for discussion. In addition to objective reporters, there are online opinion journalists; fiercely partisan journalists; civic-minded, engaged journalists; citizen-inclusive “participatory” journalists; and social media journalists. All have different aims. To make matters worse, this disagreement occurs at the worst possible time – when journalists seek agreement on norms for new tools, from the ethics of social media to the responsible use of technologies such as crowdsourcing, drones, and virtual reality. The result, ethically, is fragmentation. Journalism ethics is so fragmented that it resembles an archipelago of separate islands of value, where journalists hold different and incommensurable interpretations of what journalism ought to be.

Second, responsible journalists now work in a toxic (and global) public sphere of partisan media content, misinformation, hackers and trolls, political networks, extreme populists, and far-right “journalism.” To counter these worldwide forces, it is not sufficient that journalists define themselves in traditional terms – reporting events and alleged facts in a neutral and balanced manner. A fundamental rethinking of journalism’s primary aims is required.

Third, the globalization of news media questions the historically dominant view that journalists are, first and foremost, patriotic to their nation. The duties of journalism ethics are parochial – to the citizens of a nation. But in a global media world, should journalism ethics stop at one’s border? If stories with serious impact cross borders, what are the ethical norms for evaluating their publication? What the larger and different duties of global news media? Do we need to refashion journalism ethics as a global media ethics?

Shifting issues

To appreciate how the issues for journalism ethics have changed, compare a list of the issues that have been taught in journalism ethics courses for years with a list of the new issues of digital news media. Traditionally, the problem areas have been:

• accuracy and verification: How much verification and context is required to publish a story? How much editing and “gate-keeping” is necessary?
• independence and allegiances: How can journalists be independent but maintain ethical relations with their employers, editors, advertisers, sources, the police, and the public? When is a journalist too close to a source or in a conflict of interest?
• deception and fabrication: Should journalists misrepresent themselves or use recording technology, such as hidden cameras, to get a story? Should literary journalists invent dialogue or create composite “characters”?
• graphic images and image manipulation: When should journalists publish graphic or gruesome images? When do published images constitute sensationalism or exploitation? When and how should images be altered?
• sources and confidentiality: Should journalists promise confidentiality to sources? How far does that protection extend? Should journalists go “off the record”?
• special situations: How should journalists report hostage-takings, major breaking news, suicide attempts, and other events where coverage could exacerbate the problem? When should journalists violate privacy?

Here, in contrast, are some of the issues that dominate digital journalism ethics:

• questions of identity: If citizens and non-professional journalists report and analyze events around the world, who is a journalist?
• questions about scope: If everyone is potentially a publisher, does journalism ethics apply to everyone? If so, how does that change the nature and teaching of journalism ethics?
• questions about content: What are the most appropriate principles, approaches, and purposes for digital journalism ethics? For example, is news objectivity still a valid ideal?
• questions about new journalism: How can new forms of journalism, e.g. non-profit journalism or entrepreneurial journalism, maintain standards such as editorial independence?
• questions about community engagement: What ethical norms should guide the use of citizen content and newsroom partnerships with external groups?
• questions about global impact: Should journalists see themselves as global communicators? How do journalists reconcile their patriotic values with their duty to humanity and to address global issues from multiple perspectives?
• questions about amplification of intolerant voices and fake news: How should journalists cover the actions of intolerant groups and avoid being the purveyors of false facts and fake news?

The difference between the two lists is not that traditional concerns, e.g., editorial independence or anonymous sources, have disappeared. They have not. The difference is otherwise and threefold: one, the discussion of traditional concerns in the past presumed relatively wide agreement on the journalism principles that would adjudicate any specific issue. No such consensus exists today. Two, even where the issue is the same, e.g., verifying stories, the context and problems are different. Verification in a digital world is different from the traditional and, by comparison, “leisurely” pace of verifying stories for tomorrow’s newspaper. Third, the new list goes deeper and asks questions about the nature and aims of journalism.

What consensus? The professional model

Talk of fragmentation of an existing ethic and the rejection of traditional principles leads to the question: what was the field of journalism ethics before the digital revolution?

Given that journalism is a multi-nation enterprise, it would be foolhardy to claim that there was one ethical model observed by most or all journalists. Journalists will never totally agree on their ethics, and diversity in practice is a good thing, overall. Nevertheless, there are dominant traditions and principles in journalism amid the diversity, allowing for some useful, if qualified, generalizations. One has only to compare the hundreds of journalism codes of ethics to see agreement on certain principles, such as truth-seeking and accuracy.⁵

My generalization is this: beginning in the early 20th century, in Western journalism, particularly in North America and Western Europe, journalism ethics changed from an idiosyncratic, newsroom-specific set of informal rules to a codified, craft-wide set of explicit principles for the new professional journalists. The codes applied to all journalists of a certain type (e.g., broadcasters) or to all journalists in a nation. The codes constituted a professional model of responsible journalism. There emerged a consensus that, at a minimum, journa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• 1 Why disrupt?
• 2 Disrupt dualisms – holism
• 3 Disrupt detachment – engagement
• 4 Disrupt patriotism – globalism
• 5 Disrupt the public sphere – detox
• 6 Shape of a future ethic
• Bibliography
• Index