Journalism Ethics and Regulation

Chris Frost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138796577
• eBook ISBN: 9781317634294
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The new edition of Journalism Ethics and Regulation presents an accessible, comprehensive and in-depth guide to this vital and fast moving area of journalistic practice and academic study.

The fourth edition presents expanded and updated chapters on:

• Privacy, including the pitfalls of Facebook privacy policies and access to social media as a source
• Gathering the news, including dimensions of accessing material online, the use of crowd sourcing, email interviews, and the issues surrounding phone hacking, blagging and computer hacking
• New regulation systems including comparison of statutory, state and government regulation, pre-publication regulation, online regulation, and the impact of the Leveson Enquiry on regulation
• Exploration of who regulates and the issues regarding moderation of user content
• Journalism ethics and regulation abroad, including European constitutional legalisation, ethics and regulation in the former Soviet states, and regulation based on Islamic law.

The book also features brand new chapters examining ethical issues on the internet and journalism ethics, and print regulation in the 21st century.

Journalism Ethics and Regulation continues to mix an engaging style with an authoritative approach, making it a prefect resource for both students and scholars of the media and working journalists.

Chapter 1

What are ethics?

This chapter discusses:

• Morality and the need for professional ethics

• Some of the theories identified by classical thinkers on morals

• How the key moral theories can be applied to journalism ethics.

Ethics is defined by The Concise Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the science of morals, treatise on this, moral principles or rules of conduct’ (1964: 415). The word comes from the Greek éthikos meaning ‘of or for morals’. Morals are described by the same dictionary as being concerned with ‘the distinction between right and wrong’. This comes from the Latin mos (pl. mores) which means ‘a measure or guiding rule of life; as determined not by the law but by men’s will and pleasure’ (Lewis and Short 1900). Clifford G. Christians et al. define ethics as: ‘The liberal arts discipline that appraises voluntary human conduct insofar as it can be judged right or wrong in reference to determinative principles’ (1998: 7).

In practice, ethics is a way of studying morality which allows decisions to be made when individuals face specific cases of moral dilemma. At their most praiseworthy, the journalist’s tussles are going to be between the right of the public to know and some other moral tenet – perhaps the invasion of an individual’s privacy – which would militate against publication. This right of the public to know springs from the theory of representative, democratic government. Mill (1991: 245) tells us:

There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government, by the personal discharge of some public function, local or general.

In his excellent essay supporting this view, Mill makes it clear that correct and detailed information about how the country is run is an important prerequisite for any person involved in taking political decisions and this must surely apply, even if the decision taken is only how to vote every few years.

However, all too often the right to know is used as an excuse to publish circulation-boosting journalism. Whether this is designed to appeal to readers’ prurient natures or pander to their prejudices does not seem to matter as long as there is a profit to be made from increasing sales.

Why do we need morality?

If we lived in a world that contained no other people, would we need to be moral? If no other entity existed and we were totally alone would our day-to-day existence contain any need to modify our behaviour in order to do what was morally right? How could we steal? There would be no one to murder or insult. The only person offended by our violence, bad language and behaviour would be ourselves. Those who believe in a deity would of course still say that morality was important, that God had laid down moral rules which must still be followed. But even those who do not believe in God would find it morally repugnant to do some things. Chopping down all the trees in the world, even if no one else was there, would be an act that many would consider to be immoral. Morality would still be an important consideration in your life in such circumstances; it would just have very different rules. Without anyone else, entirely marooned, there would be far fewer moral dilemmas to solve. Moral dilemmas are the penalty of our involvement with society, the price we pay for the benefits of living in close proximity with others. At one end of the spectrum this involves adhering to the law; at the other, being courteous and respectful to others.

Many philosophers have wondered why we have morals and where they come from. There seem to be three main theories. The first of these (and perhaps the oldest) is religion. Most religions have a code of morality connected to them, usually passed to the people from God through a prophet. These morals are usually enforced by some notion of reward in the afterlife for adherence, or damnation for continually breaking the code.

The second theory is that morals are a pact with society that allows us to gain the benefits of living with others. These are taught to us by our parents and others and are initially enforced by our parents and, later, more subtly but just as strongly, by society at large. Very few of us continue to do something that society generally thinks is wrong and opposes, certainly not that strand of society with which we bond. The final theory is that we are moral because we are naturally attuned to doing the right thing – that somehow we instinctively know what is right and wrong and that even if we were not taught how to behave, we would still instinctively behave well. This seems unlikely. One only has to watch young children for a short time to realise that their behaviour is entirely self-centred and only becomes more moral over time as they are trained by their parents and society.

Some elements of unacceptable social behaviour are identified as damaging enough to a society for the whole of that society to insist on their suppression. If, for example, we were to allow murder or serious violence to be used as methods of solving disputes, the benefits of society would soon cease for many people and day-to-day living would become largely unbearable. ‘Might is right’ is fine when you are one of the mighty, but none of us are mighty all of the time. It is in all our interests to ensure that we all adhere to the rules and that those who don’t are punished. Because of the potential for breakdown, many societies formalise the rules under which that society exists. These become the laws of that particular society and allow it to lay down penalties for transgressors. The death penalty is the most extreme penalty society can impose for serious crimes whereas prison is generally seen as a milder form of punishment. The law is good at providing support for those moral dilemmas with which we are all in agreement, but is far less good at dealing with moral dilemmas about which there is considerable debate. The law is for saying what we must do or must not do; it is not good at saying what we ought to do or not do. The law can tell me that I mustn’t kill or be violent to a member of my family if they annoy me, but it can’t tell me that I ought to be kind and generous to them whenever possible. This doesn’t stop the law trying to regulate what we ought to do, of course, just that these tend to be the kind of laws that are more difficult to enforce. Laws about alcohol use, smoking and recreational drugs, for instance, throw up considerable differences of opinion within society. These are areas where someone’s personal morality can conflict quite strongly with the law. One person might want to limit the hours when drink can be sold, but be quite happy about legalising cannabis; another might feel that it’s not the state’s business to decide when one can have an alcoholic drink but feel that all other recreational drugs should be illegal.

Laws normally apply to the whole of society but there are some actions that can only be perpetrated by certain people in certain positions. Some of these actions are so important to society that they require legislation. For instance, corruption of officials or politicians only involves a few people in powerful positions but the corruption may affect many other people. Consequently we enshrine such matters in our legal system. Other issues, a doctor’s impropriety with a patient, for instance, may affect individuals but do not directly damage society and consequently are not enshrined directly in law. This is where professional ethics become important. A doctor who has an affair with a patient may be deemed to have breached professional ethics; he or she has not broken the law. A journalist is in the same position. For example, if he or she takes advantage of a situation and does not deal fairly with those to whom he or she owes loyalty (e.g. revealing a source who wishes to remain anonymous), then it is unlikely that society will suffer directly but the individual might well suffer. There are a wide range of issues in which journalists are involved that are not subject to the law but must be considered from an ethical viewpoint.

Why do journalists need professional ethics?

The concept of an ethical journalist may seem to be a contradiction in terms. The phrase ‘you shouldn’t believe all you read in the papers’ sums up the attitude of many people. A reasonable definition of a good journalist is ‘someone who gathers, in a morally justifiable way, topical, truthful, factually-based information of interest to the reader or viewer and then publishes it in a timely, entertaining and accurate manner to a mass audience’. However, all too often journalism falls far short of this ideal. Nor is this necessarily a description that would be used by all journalists to describe excellence in the profession. Many colleagues would describe a good journalist as having the professional virtues of ‘getting the story’ – the ability to find an interesting story, research it and return it to the news centre by the deadline. How the news was gathered and sourced, together with the degree of accuracy, would seem to be secondary considerations in this definition of a ‘good journalist’. ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story’ is an instruction that has been heard in more than one newsroom.

The suggestion that journalists are more concerned about the story than how they get it, or whether it is truthful, highlights the pressures under which those in the profession work. Commercial pressures to provide the most interesting stories combine with tight deadlines to make journalists more single-minded than perhaps they should be. Essentially this is an argument of functionality. Is a good journalist one with high principles or one who brings his employer, within the deadline, stories that will boost circulation? The reader may say the former even though they add support to the latter every time they buy a newspaper or tune in to a news bulletin. All too often a journalist can forget his or her loyalties to the reader in the rush to show loyalty to his or her employer.

But a good journalist surely needs to be both. In order to win the reader’s trust, a journalist must show time after time that stories are accurate and truthful and this will involve ensuring they are gathered fairly. Gathering stories without due regard to professional morals and printing them without regard to truth might work well for a short period, but since the purpose of journalism is to report the truth, the trust a reader has for the journalist would soon evaporate and this means that the journalistic vehicle would become useless.

Many journalists believe that they should be trusted by their readers and that this is the mark of good journalism. But that trust must be earned and the only way to ensure trust from anyone is to never let them down. If you are always providing readers with stories that have been gathered fairly and are presented to them accurately and honestly to reveal as much truth as is possible, then readers will come to trust the journalist. No other method will work as well or stand the test of time.

Classical theory

Our moral obligations can be explained by a number of different theories, some of them overlapping and some completely at odds with one another. Some of these theories can help journalists try to determine the morality of their professional actions. I will consider a few of the more important theories and their implications for journalism. There are many other leading philosophers whose work I have ignored as being either derivative or less easy to apply directly to professional morality.

Aristotle

Aristotle (d. 322 bc) was a Greek philosopher who believed that the function of human beings was to pursue happiness or Eudaimonia. ‘Eudaimonia is often translated as happiness, but that can be misleading. It is sometimes translated as flourishing. Which although slightly awkward, has more appropriate connotations’ (Warburton 1998: 18). To achieve happiness, Aristotle said, one should live moderately. His theory is known as the ‘golden mean’. He argued that one should live neither to excess nor to frugality but in moderation somewhere between the two. Aristotle’s theory is extremely useful provided you can decide what is excess and what is frugality and where the mean lies. Bravery, he tells us, is a virtue that lies somewhere between the extremes of cowardice and rashness. When Aristotle talks about a mean, however, he is not talking about an average. To take the example of drinking: it is not to say that at one extreme is drinking far too much alcohol or at the other drinking none at all and that taking an average of say four units of alcohol a night is the mean. Aristotle contended that the right mean may well vary from person to person or even occasion to occasion. So there are people who say it is wrong to drink alcohol but they are often accused of being too self-satisfied and sanctimonious to be considered morally good. Nor are they necessarily acting in their own best interests as certainly some health research shows that a drink every now and again is good for you. Refusing to drink a toast to peace or friendship in Western Europe at a gathering of European delegates because you do not believe in drinking alcohol could be perceived as being mean-spirited. On the other hand, few people would see drinking fifteen units of alcohol every night of the week as acceptable for a whole variety of reasons. It is also bad for your health. Most would regard having a drink now and again as the ‘golden mean’.

Aristotle also believed that one had to learn to be virtuous. Virtue was not something that was given to all automatically. It explained why children and animals had not achieved Eudaimonia.

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as the result of habit … From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arise in us by nature; for nothing that exists in nature can form a habit that is contrary to its nature. For instance, the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times.

(Aristotle 1980: 28)

A problem with Aristotle’s theory about the mean, however, is that there are some virtues that seem to be absolutes. Truth, for instance, does not seem to be a virtue to be delivered in moderation. Either one is truthful or one is not. It is in its failure to address the issue of moral absolutes that Aristotle’s theory is seen to be deficient.

Religion

Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

(Mark 12: 29–31)

Religion is the basis of much moral teaching in the world. The West has been mainly influenced by Judaeo-Christian ethics whereas much of the Arab and North African world has seen Islam as a strong and uncompromising influence. In India, Hinduism is a powerful religious and social system, which includes the use of the caste system as the basis of society.

Although theoretically religious moral teaching requires a belief in God to underpin it, this seems in practice to be unimportant. In Britain, and indeed most Western countries, Christianity has become so entrenched within the culture that much moral teaching and thought comes from it without being based on active belief. Our fundamental structures of right and wrong, good and evil tend to be based on the Bible’s teachings.

While its use by Christians is understandable, many people in the West who claim not to believe in God also use this ethical system to underpin their moral values, if only because they have absorbed the established cultural moral underpinning without much thought as to its origins. Christians accept the entire teaching. However, those who do not believe in God seem to be able to accept the guidance on living a good life without the religious belief and to use it as an ethical system.

The main criticism of religion as an ethical system is the need for faith. What if God is not a loving and moral God? U...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What are ethics?
• 2 News: towards a definition
• 3 Morality of reporting
• 4 The good journalist
• 5 Truth, accuracy, objectivity and trust
• 6 Privacy and intrusion
• 7 Reputation
• 8 Gathering the news
• 9 Reporting the vulnerable
• 10 Deciding what to publish
• 11 Harm and offence
• 12 The internet and journalism ethics
• 13 Professional practice
• 14 Regulation
• 15 History of print regulation in the twentieth century
• 16 History of press regulation in the twenty-first century
• 17 History of broadcast regulation
• 18 Codes of conduct as a regulatory system
• 19 Press regulation systems in the UK and Ireland
• 20 Broadcast regulation systems in the UK and Ireland
• 21 The experience abroad
• Appendix 1 IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice
• Appendix 2 NUJ Code of Conduct
• Appendix 3 Code of Practice for Press Council of Ireland
• Appendix 4 BBC Code of Ethics
• Appendix 5 Ofcom Broadcasting Code
• Appendix 6 Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Code
• Appendix 7 International Federation of Journalists
• Appendix 8 SPJ Code of Ethics
• Appendix 9 Addresses for regulatory bodies
• Appendix 10 Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index