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The Fourth Question:
What’s It Worth?
Prioritize your values—both moral and non-moral values—and
decide which one(s) you won’t compromise.
his question frames the longest section of the book, with an overarching chapter on the
nature of values (Chapter 6) and chapters aimed at media-specific topics of truth
(Chapter 7), privacy (Chapter 8), and persuasion (Chapter 9). These topics may be what
students originally expected to study in a media ethics course—and perhaps topics
The next question asks decision makers to, once they’ve considered the “to whom” they
owe loyalty, to then consider the competing values that come into play and to decide
which values cannot be sacrificed. The notion of ethics as a question of “right vs. right”
becomes particularly important here; we hope that students have the grounding to
move more deeply after the previous discussions on moral development, on rules vs.
codes vs. independent thinking, and on the need to consider multiple stakeholders
The next chapters:
Introduce the concept of values, including social psychological ways to
identify, clarify, and rank personal values.
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practitioners.
Consider truth as a value. Clearly, much of mass communication is about
“truth,” but its definitions the practical implications of truth telling raise issues worthy
of discussion.
As we’ve said before, we wrote the textbook to be “platform agnostic” and worked to
make it as relevant to all mass communication students. This was especially difficult
when talking about the fourth question, and we think it could be especially rewarding.
It’s been our experience that students in different disciplines sometimes look down
jobs and disciplines throughout their careers—and students regardless of job need to be
media savvy—we hope the chapters offer something in the way of cross-pollination
among students and their majors. Indeed, empathy will make journalists more
The 15 new case studies in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 provide ways for students to focus on
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their own disciplines—and several of the Chapter 7 cases provide different perspectives
on the same case.
One topic that you might want to discuss is how students rate equality and freedom;
once you believe you have freedom, you may be less likely to think about equality.
(Upper-middle class, white students, tend to rank freedom high but equality low.
Students with disabilities, as well as some minority students, will put equality and
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Chapter 6
Personal and Professional Values
hapter 6 starts by taking a broad approach to thinking about values, and then returns to
mass media codes of ethics—which we noted in Chapter 2 are often insufficient to
resolve moral dilemmas—as a way of showing students the values that their various
media disciplines consider to be important.
Learning Objectives
A successful discussion of Chapter 6 will lead students to:
Understand various approaches to defining values.
Gain insight into their own values through systematic values inquiry.
Teaching Values Clarification
As Richard Morrill explained in Teaching Values in College (1980, Jossey-Bass Inc.), the
“basic aim of values clarification is to enhance personal growth through heightened
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self-awareness” (p. 12).
It may be best for teachers to remain neutral in discussions.
Students should respect the differing opinions of others.
Instructors should both tolerate and be supportive as they challenge students to
think at higher levels.
Teaching Suggestions
We suggest these activities:
1. Give students a list of the Rokeach or Schwartz/Bilsky values (or refer them to
the values stated in the textbook) and a stack of newspapers. Ask students to read the
stories, and consider the values of the people in the story—the sources, the topics, and
the media practitioners (such as celebrities or PR practitioners) quoted or referred to in
2. Work through the chapter’s key points in a lecture/discussion. If using the
accompanying PowerPoint, the points include:
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Chapter 6 personal/professional values, Chapter 7 truth/deception, Chapter 8
privacy/public life, Chapter 9.
b. Defining values—three slides that define what values are, and what values are
not.
c. The importance of values: How our values ultimately determine our behavior
f. Rokeach’s descriptions of terminal values (goals we’d like to reach in our
lifetime) and instrumental values (that we use to help us reach our terminal values.)
g. If you gave students the Rokeach Values Inventory at the end of the previous
class, take time to discuss your analysis of the general results of the Rokeach values
inventory. (See the note under “Discussing a Class’s Values for details.)
i. Values and Media Codes of Ethics. The discussion can be as broad or as narrow
as needed based on the interests and majors of your students, and the discussion in Box
6.4—“Values in Media Codes of Ethics”—provides a shortcut to the key values held by
various media organizations. When that discussion ends, it can be summarized with
statements from “some conclusions about values in media ethics codes.”
Discussing a Class’s Values
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If you used the Rokeach Values Inventory with your class, you can make the discussion
more relevant by analyzing the results from your class: Ranking from most-to-least
important, and showing minimum/maximum rankings and standard deviations to the
values that students seemed to have the most and least in common. Sample questions
might include:
1. Does rank order matter? Say you’re dealing with a person (client, news source,
audience, etc.) whose values differ from your values? How do you bridge those values?
2. Ask: “Guess what the highest instrumental value is for prisoners?” (Correct
answer: Cleanliness, because inmates cannot bathe on a regular basis and often live in
close proximity to others.) “Cleanliness” likely will rank low among your class, because
3. Note the gap, if one exists, between the terminal values of “freedom” and
“equality.” What does that mean? (In heterogeneous majority populations, freedom