Media Ethics Revisited

Cross-posted from the media studies discussion website Mediapolis:

Cambridge hosted a big-time conference last weekend. Entitled The Ethics of Media, it brought together philosophers (Onora O'Neill, Sabina Lovibond), media theorists (Daniel Dayan, Lilie Chouliaraki), media anthropologists (Georgina Born, Mirca Madianou), and journalists (BBC's David Edmonds) to discuss the central question: Can we construct a media ethics, and how might it look like?

There's a million things to discuss! Including (my unexpected fave) "What if Foucault Had a Blog?" But perhaps the most significant issue that came out during the conference is the tension among different camps in answering whether we should construct an ethics for the media at all.

On one hand, the philosophers and theorists were ready with their prescriptions of what media ethics should be premised on. Some advocated a deontological approach, that is: ethics based on duty or obligation. Roger Silverstone's prescription of Hospitality was key here. But even then, there were disagreements: Justice and Freedom were also floated as alternative primary norms. Some others advocated a virtue-ethics Aristotelian approach that looked at journalists' identities and intentions themselves and how they strive to do the Good and live out virtues of accuracy and sincerity.

On the other hand, there were calls for a bottom-up approach to ethics. Georgina Born, famous of course for her ethnography of the BBC, argued that practical ethics should come first, with institutional and universal ethics to come later. It is important to look at government policies, institutional structures, as well as journalists' resources (skills, equipment, etc.), and output all helping or hindering 'ethical' media production.

And there were those, such as Barbie Zelizer, who raised the impossibility of speaking of a universal ethics at all. Her main argument is that because of differences in context, across time and space, it is impossible to prescribe catch-all standards to judge what is good or bad journalism. Her case study was on about-to-die photographs. She said that about-to-die paintings of greek gods and Cleopatra were deemed aesthetic in the past. Then in the 1950s, a journalist won a Pulitzer for taking a photo of a woman falling from a building mid-suicide. But then in NYC 50 years later, a similar photo of a college student was published by the NY Post but was widely criticized for its insensitivity. Then in 9/11, such photos of people jumping from the Towers were excised from American media accounts but were circulated in other countries. Notions of 'good' and 'bad' photojournalism were also contested in circulating photos of Saddam Hussein's capture, Daniel Pearl's kidnapping, and the torture of prisoners. Across time and space then, she said notions of 'good' and 'bad' vary: how can we construct a universal standard then? For her, relativistic ethics is then what we should have.

Now, as participants in the global space of appearance, what do YOU think media ethics should look like? How might your own text of the Kyoto Agreement for Media Ethics read like? Do you agree with Daniel Dayan who argues that journalists have to be Priests, have to be Superhuman, have to sacrifice their own rights to be subjects?

THIS is the podcast with Barbie Zelizer (UPenn), Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths) and Don Slater (LSE). Joanna (30:00) presented a lively and against-the-grain reading of Foucault with "What If Foucault Had a Blog?" Interesting also, during the Q&A, in the 1:20:00 mark, Daniel Dayan comments how his arguments were "powerfully destroyed" by Barbie. He then proceeds to launch his own very powerful yet humble comeback to Barbie.

Jon with Daniel Dayan, the Pope of Media Ethics

Geekgasmic.