Media Ethics

Matthew Kieran, Matthew Kieran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134703531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Media Ethics brings together philosophers, academics and media professionals to debate pressing ethical and moral questions for journalists and the media and to examine basic notions such as truth, virtue, privacy, rights, offence, harm and freedom which are used in answering them.

1 Journalism and ethics

Can they co-exist?

Andrew Belsey

Introduction

Both the image and the essence of journalism are hard to pin down because each appears to contain contradictory strands. By ‘image’ I mean the way in which journalism is generally regarded by the public. By ‘essence’ I mean the reality that lies behind (or apart from) the image. It is well known that journalism has a poor image with the public. They do not regard it highly. They are suspicious of journalists and the way they practise their trade. Journalists are regarded in much the same way as politicians, as disreputable, untrustworthy and dishonest, pushing a personal or sectional interest rather than the facts of the case. If people are told that the essence of journalism is truth-telling, they will react with some scepticism or derision. If they are told that the practice of journalism is founded on ethical principles they will either laugh or, if they are prepared to take the matter seriously, point out that the typical tabloid story is trivial, scurrilous or invented.

But all this is contradicted by another image of journalism, illustrated by the most extraordinary event of the British General Election of May 1997. This was the election of Martin Bell as Member of Parliament for the Tatton constituency. Until about a month before the election, Mr Bell was a television journalist – a respected journalist, let it be said – working for the BBC, reporting from the war-torn zones of the world with an immediacy and an integrity that made a considerable impact. To cut a long story short, Mr Bell stood as an anti-corruption (or as the media put it, ‘anti-sleaze’) candidate against Neil Hamilton, the previous MP for the constituency, who was alleged to have been involved in financial dealings ethically incompatible with the status of a Member of Parliament. When Mr Hamilton refused to stand down and was renominated by his party, the candidates of the other major parties withdrew to give Mr Bell a clear run, and he was elected as an Independent with some ease.

This was an unusual situation. It is unusual for non-party candidates to be elected to the House of Commons. It is even more unusual for major parties to stand aside to assist a non-party candidate. But what was most unusual was that this non-party candidate, standing on a platform of public and political honesty, was a journalist, a member of a profession usually mistrusted as much as politicians themselves. But here was the public, or at least that part of it represented by the electors of Tatton, putting their trust in Mr Bell as the right person to stand up against political corruption, or any suspicion of it.

Part of the reason for this is the character of Martin Bell himself, as he is well known to the television audience who have been able to assess him as a person of integrity. But there is more to it than this. It is not that there is a general mistrust of journalists, but with Martin Bell as the sole exception. There is a different and competing image of journalism, which can indeed be focused on reporters like Martin Bell. Journalists who, for example, stand in bullet-strewn areas at considerable risk to themselves, telling the viewers via the camera what exactly is going on, are regarded as brave and honourable, and almost certainly doing their honest best to present an objective and truthful account of what is happening and why.

There is, perhaps, a difference between television and newspaper journalism here. Many people rely on television as the main source of information for news, current affairs, world events, consumer matters and the like. Being able to see the journalist or presenter and whatever else is on the screen means that the audience can to some extent trust its eyes rather than rely solely on the word. Of course, in one sense this means that there is even greater scope for manipulative propaganda if the control of television broadcasting is in the wrong hands, so the audience will also take the source into account. In the United Kingdom the BBC is more trusted than channels with purely commercial (profit-seeking) interests, which is one reason why the maintenance of public service broadcasting is socially and politically important. Still, although of course anyone would be foolish to place absolute trust in anything that appears on television, there is a contrast with the newspaper world, where there is the suspicion among readers, justifiably based on actual cases that have been exposed, that journalists sit in their offices and invent stories. Newspapers are also known to be politically biased and to treat their readers unscrupulously, so why should they be trusted? But it is not just intentional bias that is regarded as a danger. Although both television images and written stories are taken in through the eyes, there is an enormous difference in their reception, for words are known to be deceptive, always at a remove from a reality that can be depicted directly.

It would, however, be a mistake to rely on there being an intrinsic difference between television and newspaper journalism. Although stories have been invented by some newspapers, it is usually other papers that have exposed these deceptions of the public. And the alleged corruption against which Martin Bell offered himself as a symbol was brought to light by a lengthy and sustained campaign by newspaper journalists, and one that was legally dangerous, given the severity of British libel law. And as for the deceptiveness of the written word, this is not the place to go into this ancient and extraordinarily deep philosophical issue, so let me just say that it is a problem that we mostly manage to overcome at a pragmatic level in our daily lives. Whenever we are offered information, whether by newspapers, television, the Internet or any other source, we have no option but to use our everyday intelligence to assess it for reliability. This applies as much to a depiction as to a word or written text.

There is then no general assurance of the soundness of journalism. Just as nowadays the practice of television journalism is satirised on television, so there is a long tradition of satire against the foolishness of the newspaper industry before the television age (Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, for instance). But there have always been journalists who have stood out from the crowd because their virtue (if not always their judgement) seems unimpeachable. There are examples this century from George Orwell and James Cameron down to the investigative journalists of recent years, who have recognised that the proper practice of journalism must sometimes be subversive and anti-establishment, and expose what those in power would rather keep concealed from the public to whom they should be accountable.

The point, however, is not that there are exceptional individuals like Orwell, Cameron and Bell who escape the public suspicion and distrust of journalists. It is rather, as I have already hinted, that there is a different and competing image of journalism, one that contradicts the low esteem in which journalism is held. No doubt there is a good deal of Hollywood in this image, but it is more than a myth. This alternative image presents the journalist as the fearless investigative reporter standing up against the mob or the dishonest city boss, determined to expose the corruption because ‘the public has a right to know’. More generally this is an image which sees journalism as serving a useful, even indispensable function in society, providing the information, the analysis, the discussion and the comment without which a modern complex society could not operate. This takes us straight to the underlying political justification for the existence of journalism and for such notions as ‘the freedom of the press’, that the free circulation of news and opinion is a requirement of a democratic society.¹

Journalism as an industry

Corresponding roughly to the double image of journalism is a two-sided reality but one in which the two sides contradict rather than complement each other. On the one hand journalism is an industry, a major player in the profit-seeking market economy, and journalists are merely workers in that industry, driven by the need to make a living. On the other hand journalism is a profession, a vocation founded on ethical principles which direct and regulate the conduct of the practitioner. Since trying to live in both these realities is difficult, if not contradictory, deeper explanation and analysis is called for.

There is no doubt that journalism is a major industry. Indeed, journalism is too narrow a term: this is the age of the media. The media are multifarious, transnational and interlinked: newspapers, magazines, television, radio, film, video, cable, communication satellites, the Internet are increasingly coming under the control of a handful of corporations which are based nowhere and everywhere and which seek greater market share, greater profits and greater global influence. In spite of the variety the media is, in defiance of grammar, a singular phenomenon, and one which has universal effect. Once upon a time social theorists were concerned with material production and with the means of production, the farms, forests, factories, fleets and mines which constituted the economy. Today we are sometimes urged to forget these old-fashioned concerns and to realise that this is the age not of production but of information, and that it is the means of information that now dominate economic and social life and provide an insight into its heart and mind.

In such an industry media workers are like any other workers. They are concerned with getting a job, job security, working conditions, future prospects, and, quite rightly, personal satisfaction. They are under the usual pressures of work in the 1990s: line management, downsizing, deskilling (‘shorthand not required’) and reskilling (‘Windows 95^TM and PageMaker^TM required’). It is market share and the ‘bottom line’ that rule, and sales figures, circulation figures, audience figures and keeping the advertisers happy dominate the thoughts and actions of the executives who manage the various branches of the corporation. This ethos soon permeates the whole structure of the media industry, including, it must be stressed, that part of it still theoretically devoted to the public service. In a competitive market audience figures and the urge towards growth are as inescapable in ‘non-commercial’ organisations as in the explicitly profit-seeking ones.²

Let me admit that this is not the whole story, for, whatever other age we live in, it is also nominally the ethical age, not just in medical ethics and other traditional areas of moral concern but in environmental ethics, professional ethics, business ethics. Corporations – not necessarily from the best of motives but because they recognise and fear the power of the concerned consumer – include ethical objectives in their statements of principle, and emphasise their commitment to environmental responsibility, the rights of indigenous people, meeting the needs of the customer, personal (or personnel) development, parental leave, crèches, and all the other symbols of the modern caring corporation. But while admitting all this it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that overall it has little effect against the overwhelming demands of competition and the requirement for growth as the only means to survival in a heartless world. The market is either amoral or immoral (or perhaps both at different times), and this affects the media industry as much as any other.³

What then of ethics in the media? Inasmuch as workers of all sorts are required to ‘perform’, financial objectives predominate and there seems to be little scope for ethics, irrespective of the worker’s own personal motives and desires. Perhaps it could even be argued that in journalism the situation is worse, because the doctor who exploits a vulnerable patient for sexual favours can be struck off and lose the privilege of practising, and an accountant who steals from clients can be sent to prison, but a journalist who misbehaves may get a scoop and a promotion. The theoretical and practical difficulty, however, lies in deciding what constitutes journalistic misbehaviour.

There are two contradictory pressures on journalists. On the one hand they are subject to the attention of the lobbyists and the publicity-seekers, who not only want their story told but want their own slant on it. This is an ethically-fraught area (especially if the lobbyist happens to be also the owner of the newspaper or television channel). But it is the other hand which is even more ethically interesting and puzzling here, because a lot of journalism consists of discovering and printing information about something or some situation that those involved in would rather keep secret. (Sometimes, of course, the two hands come together: journalists are deliberately given a misleading story to print but recognise it for what it is and have to investigate for themselves what the real story is.)

To make the situation even more complicated, this second aspect of journalism can itself be divided into at least two parts. First, much of the practice of discovering and printing information that some people would wish to keep secret is absolutely and legitimately central to journalism. Investigative journalism, finding out what is really going on in society, keeping people well informed about political, economic and other matters, providing information, analysis and comment, is precisely what a responsible press is supposed to do in a democracy in order to serve the public interest. But where are the boundaries of the public interest? That is the question. They do not coincide, as has often been pointed out, with what the public is interested in.

The second part of discovering and printing what some people would prefer to keep secret often involves information that the public is interested in, but should not be, from an ethical point of view. This is what is not legitimately part of journalism. This can involve any combination of ethically dubious content, presentation and investigation. The content may be what is properly secret, or at least private (the two are not the same).⁴ Thus personal privacy should be respected, and although it is difficult to draw the line, there are some things clearly on the wrong side of it, like invasions of private grief and suffering. But well beyond this private people are entitled to a private life; the difficulty is always in deciding who are these ‘private people’.⁵ Then there is the question of presentation. Dubious material is usually presented in dubious ways, involving trivialisation, sensationalism, obscenity, vulgarity, racism, sexism and homophobia. But even legitimate material can be presented in ways that are ethically offensive, a point often overlooked in discussions of media ethics.

Methods of investigation have traditionally received more ethical attention. There are technological aids, like long-range cameras, telephone taps and electronic eavesdropping devices of all sorts, used to spy on people and pry into their affairs. Of course, modern technology cannot be blamed for unethical journalism, since deception, lying and trespass have always been open to journalists. We know, of course, that journalists often behave in such unethical ways, and if it is unethical, then they should not do it. It is as simple as that.

If only it were as simple as that! The point is that words like ‘deception’, ‘lying’ and even ‘spy’ and ‘pry’ have the ethical evaluation, the condemnation, built into them. But should activities like this, only without the condemnation, be contemplated by journalists? Let us revisit the distinction between the content, the material of journalism, and the method of investigation. Could the end justify the means? In the investigation of crime or corruption, or just incompetence, perhaps the journalist has to resort to some deception.⁶ These are areas where the people involved would rather keep things secret but where the public really does have a right to know. There is a long and honourable tradition (perhaps dying now) of investigative journalism, in which the journalist cannot come straight out with the questions. Much investigative journalism (like much police work) is not glamorous but consists of the minute analysis and comparison of thousands of documents. But then some first-hand investigation might be called for, in which a bit of deception, a touch of electronic eavesdropping, is the only available means – but with words like ‘deception’ and ‘eavesdropping’ shorn of their condemnatory ethical undertones.

But can we play about with the meanings of words like this? In this context the question is part of a much larger and central ethical issue about the relation of ends and means, and the related problem of dirty hands. Can we do good by doing bad? If we are doing good, then perhaps we are not doing bad. The issue usually comes up in discussions of issues much more difficult than journalism, like war and violence. Is bombing a city justifiable if civilians will be killed? Is it morally right to assassinate the evil dictator?⁷ (It is worth remembering, however, that for journalists not lucky enough to work in liberal democracies, this last question might be practically pressing rather than merely theoretical, especially when the dictator is not only willing and able to assassinate them, but preparing to.) But even in liberal democracies journalists can find themselves investigating evil and ruthless people, when prudence if not morality calls for deception. But how can the gangster, the drug pusher, the corrupt politician, the fraudulent businessman be exposed, except by methods which in other contexts would be questionable? Perhaps in these journalistic contexts such methods are morally required.

So far in this section I have been concerned with ‘industrial’ journalism, in which journalism is just a job and the journalist is subject to all the usual pressures to ‘perform’ for the sake of the corporation. I have already strayed into ethical matters but will postpone further discussion of them until the next section, when I shall deal with them more directly. Before that, what can we conclude about industrial journalism? Corporate pressures, the search for sales, the search for audience, promote the production of material that the public is interested in, rather than that which is in the public interest. So as not to appear too unconspiratorial, I should say that ‘what the public is interested in’ is not fixed, a given, eternal, immutable fact of nature. The appetite is rather, and largely, constructed by the very media t...