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The Sixth Question:
How’s Your Decision Going to Look?
State your conclusion, and imagine what your friends and people you respect will think about
your decision making.
he sixth and final question of Doing Ethics in Media is especially important for mass
communicators, who must be perceived as ethical for economic, self-actualization, and
other reasons. The public nature of many mass media decisions only raises the stakes of
The sixth question can lead mass communicators to believe that being perceived as
credible—a concept that assumes that the message recipients believe that they
messengers are therefore ethical—is the same and ethics are the same thing. As we
discuss in Chapter 13, that is not the case.
The Sixth Question reminds decision makers of the inappropriateness of ad hoc
justifications—essentially, making up a reason after you’ve been asked to justify a
decision. The question calls for us to consider stakeholders throughout the decision
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making process, and finding.
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Chapter 13
Accountability, Transparency, and
Credibility
he final chapter of Doing Ethics in Media does not stand alone. Its primary purpose is to
introduce students to ethical accountability, in the context of media-centric concepts of
transparency and credibility. But it also serves as a review of many key points of the
Chapter 1’s introduction of assigned, contracted, and assumed relationships.
How does your accountability change based upon the type of relationship you have
with others?
Chapter 4’s moral development theories. Does your accountability (or
perceived accountability) change based upon your level of moral development?
Chapter 5’s consideration of loyalties and stakeholders. How can you justify
your decisions to stakeholders—including how you ranked them when deciding “who
wins, who loses?”
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question comes last, it can only be made after considering the other questions. Without
Learning Objectives
A successful discussion of Chapter 13 will lead students to:
Understand the philosophical and mass communication definitions of
accountability, transparency, and credibility.
See the relationships (and differences) among the concepts.
Teaching Suggestions
We suggest these activities:
1. Start by asking students why people don’t tend to “trust the media.” The reasons
can be lumped into things that we cannot control (such as the audience’s prejudices)
2. Use the PowerPoint, which:
a. Introduces The Sixth Question: How’s your decision going to look? Note that
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while it sounds like a teleological consideration, it is in fact a consideration that all
ethicists argue is important. And, given the lack of trust in the media, it is a practical
matter for media practitioners.
b. Briefly introduces the three key concepts of Chapter 13: accountability,
i. Is tied to account-giving, blameworthiness, and responsibility.
ii. Requires us to think about stakeholders. (Imagine, as a mass media practitioner,
having to offer an accounting to every stakeholder.) It’s also worth discussing how
iii. Is related to moral development (Chapter 4.) To whom we respond, and how we
respond, is a function of our moral development.
d. Discusses transparency—with a special focus on transparency of media
practitioners and their organizations. The slides:
ii. Use the SourceÆMessageÆChannelÆReceiver description of mass media to
describe transparency at each level. Students may find it especially useful to discuss the
moral obligations of a message recipient.
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ii. Return to the accountability/transparency/credibility threesome, and shows how
they are related and unrelated.
f. Show media accountability systems, the internal, external, and mixed efforts to
make media accountable to others. (Note that many of these systems are journalism-
g. Close with the reminder that accountability is ultimately about humility.
Knowing that we may be held accountable means we will be more likely to think about
Case Study Notes
The cases for Chapter 13 are taken from Chapter 4. As you’ll recall, in Chapter 4 we
asked students not to decide what they would do. Instead, in Chapter 4 students were
to use different ways of accessing moral development to consider how people at
different levels might resolve situations.