Nick Davis
03/12/2013
ENG – 112
Ethics in the Media
Reporters face a barrage of ethical issues daily. These issues include honesty,
authenticity of information, sensationalism also known as “yellow journalism”, conflicts
of interest, and appropriateness of material. Ethics in the media is a complicated topic
because it involves a group that has to do things that people outside the media in
normal situations would not do. Media members use a plethora of principles rooted in
philosophy to stay on the ethical side of situations. These include Aristotle’s golden
mean, Mill’s principle of utility, Christian values, the Hutchins Commission’s social-
responsibility ethics, Kant’s categorical imperative, and Rawls’s veil of ignorance. One
of the best solutions modern journalists can use to solve their ethical dilemmas is Bok’s
model for ethical decision making. Still journalists and the companies that employ them
should use a variety of methods to instill and ensure ethical behavior.
Indeed journalism plays a big role in society and the things that journalists say
hold so much weight and are believed by so many, that ethical behavior is of the utmost
importance. With the rise however of “cable news” the ethics in the media have been
called into question. Channels like Fox News Network and MSNBC tout their fairness
and balance but are accused of being anything but. Due to these accusations there is a
perceived bias in the media. Every day different media outlets are purported to have a
“liberal” or “Conservative” bias. Still other people claim that there is no bias either way,
or that the bias both ways cancels each other out. If there is a bias either way this is a
clear violation of the unwritten rules of journalism. A Journalists job is to educate
society, but before educating society a Journalist must first educate his or herself,
especially when it comes to important things such as honesty, integrity, and ethics.
Opinions vary depending upon who a person is and their political leanings as to
whether there is a political bias in the media or not and to which way any political bias
may lean. Several years ago, Dan Rather an anchor for CBS asserted that any liberal
bias in the media was “one of the great political myths.” He also stated that “reporters
don’t know if they are Republican or Democrat, and vote every which way.” (Anderson
2) Author Brian C. Anderson in his book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt against
Liberal Media Bias, called Rather’s assertions “a load of hooey.” (2) Anderson pointed
out that in his opinion anyone with common sense could clearly see that the three major
networks CBS, NBC, and ABC as well as newsweeklies were overrun with liberals. He
