MASS MEDIA ETHICS

MAC 430
 WHAT IS ETHICS?

Ethics is derived from the Greek ethos,

meaning “custom,” “usage,” or
“character.” It is often thought of as a
rational process applying established
principles when two moral obligations
collide (Day, 2006).
 WHAT IS ETHICS?

 Ethics is “the liberal arts discipline that

appraises voluntary human conduct in so
far as it can be judged right or wrong in
reference to determinative principles”
(Christians et al, 1998).
Ethics is a set of principles of conduct
governing an individual or group
(Bowles and Borden, 2004).
Ethics is the science of rightness and
wrongness of conduct. Conduct is
purposive action, which involves
choice and will. It is the expression of
character which is a settled habit of
will.
It seeks to teach us how we can pass
correct judgments upon human
conduct, consider it as right or
wrong, with reference to the
supreme ideal of human life. Ethics is
the science of the ideal involved in
human life (Sinha, 2009).
Neher and Sandin (2007) note that:
“In a technical sense, ethics is a
branch of the field of philosophy,
which is concerned about judgments
on right and wrong actions.
 Neher and Sandin highlight several
aspects of the definition thus:
• First, ethics is intended to provide us
with a system so that the decisions or
judgments one makes can be justified
to others and to oneself in a clear
and objective manner.
 Second, ethics is concerned with judgments
about actions that can be determined to be
right or wrong according to the principles of
this method.
 Third, the judgments are to be made about
actions, in which the actors appear to have a
choice; they could have done otherwise.
 .
And, fourth, the actions are seen as
intentional: the persons seemed to
know what they were doing and
intended to do what they did
Ethics often involves the balancing of
competing rights when there is no
“correct” answer. A case in point is a
student who promises to remain
silent when a classmate confides that
he has cheated.
If a teacher attempts to solicit
testimony from that student
regarding her friend’s nefarious
behaviour, the student must then
weigh the value of loyalty to the
friend (a moral virtue) against
commitment to the truth - another
moral virtue (Day, 2006).
 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LAW AND
ETHICS
 Ethics is not the same as law, and ethical
constraints are not the same as legal rules.
Ethics articulates what we ought to do in order
to be moral individuals and professionals,
while law concentrates on the bottom line
below which we should not fall.

 Ethics deals with ideal behaviours, while law

deals with minimum standards.
 Ethics is the foundation for all laws but
not all laws are based on ethics. Most
laws are ethical but not all ethics are
written in law. Violation of all legal rules
can be redressed in a law court while not
all ethical violations can be compensated.
 Okoye (2008) provides the following
differences between law and ethics:
a) Law is imposed by the outer society,
while ethics is self-imposed and self-
enforced (e.g. by a professional body for
its members).
b) Law has a definite effective date while
ethics has no effective date.
c) Law can expire or be repealed, but
ethics is continuous.
d) Law has more formal institutions, such as
the legislature, police, judiciary, (the
courts, tribunals, court-martials, etc)
penitentiary (prison, reformatory, etc), but
ethics has less formal institutions for its
formulation and enforcement. Indeed, the
chief enforcer of ethic is the conscience.

e) While morality protects a way of life by

tabooing immoral action even before it
takes place, laws only provide recourse
after the deed has been done
 IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS TO THE
SOCIETY
Every society needs a system of ethics or morals
for peace, stability and cohesion. Without ethics,
morality and law, society, according to the
common saying will be brutish and short.
It is a system of ethics that guide personal,
interpersonal and public relationships.
Without ethics, there won’t be law and without
law, there will be anarchy in the society.
It is a system of ethics that the society uses as a
guide in judging and assessing conduct and
actions.
Day (2006) explains five reasons why every
society needs a system of ethics. The reasons
are:

1. The need for social stability:

Ethics is necessary for social intercourse.
Ethics is the foundation of our advanced
civilization, a cornerstone that provides some
stability to society’s moral expectations.
As humans, we must be able to trust one
another to go into agreements
2.The need for a social hierarchy:
Second, a system of ethics serves as a moral
gatekeeper in apprising society of the relative
importance of certain customs.
It does this by alerting the public to:
 those norms that are important enough to be
described as moral and
 the “hierarchy of ethical norms” and their
relative standing in the moral pecking order.
All cultures have many customs, but most do
not concern ethical mores.
3. The need to promote a dynamic social
ecology:
An ethical framework serves as a social
conscience, challenging members of a
community to examine ethical dimensions of
both public issues and private concerns and to
aspire to elevate the quality of the moral
ecology. However, the goal should not be the
ideal society (which is impossible) but a decent
society. What should be avoided are claims of
infallibility.
4.The need to resolve conflicts:
A system of ethics is an important social
institution for resolving cases involving conflict
claims based on individual self-interest. For
example, it might be in a student’s own
interest to copy from a classmate’s term
paper. It is in the classmate’s best interest to
keep her from doing so. Societal rules against
plagiarism are brought to bear in evaluating
the moral conduct inherent in this situation.
5.The need to clarify values:
A system of ethics also functions to clarify for
society the competing values and principles
inherent in emerging and novel moral
dilemmas. Some of the issues confronting
civilization today would challenge the
imagination of even the most ardent
philosopher. A case in point is the controversy
over the cloning of humans, a scientific
breakthrough with unimaginable ethical
consequences.