Media Ethics

How do we decide what’s right and what’s wrong? Who decides for us what is right and wrong? Within the entertainment industry there are certain guidelines that must be followed in order to secure the information on controversial topics that is given to the audience, this is called media ethics. Ethics are the guidelines we use to determine moral judgment and standard conduct. Media ethics are moral rules put in place for professionals within the media. The guidelines that are prevalent today are Aristotle’s Golden Mean which states “moral virtue is an appropriate location between two extremes.” This means gives balanced point of views. Another guideline is The Golden Rule, “do unto others as would have them do unto you.” In media terms this means doing no harm to the subjects of your stories and treating them humanely. There is also the “veil of ignorance” this tells journalists to ignore the differences in class and race and to treat everybody equal. It is also popular to “act according to rules that you would like to see universally applied” and “seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” The reason these guidelines are put in place is because although we have professional organizations such as churches, trade groups, and private companies to help monitor and determine what is right and wrong there is still the individual media professional who must decide what is right and wrong within their own conduct code. Larose says that “when society cannot find a consensus on which to make laws governing the conduct of the media, we hope that individual ethics will prevail.” Because of this and principles recommended by the 1947 Hutchins Commission on social responsibility we created the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. The reason for creating the Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics was to attempt to anticipate certain specific situations and to offer guidelines for journalists on how to deal with the specific situations. But what if Journalists come across a certain character or event that they’ve never seen before? What if somebody with mainstream success comes along and creates situations that have never happened before? How would the media handle it and how would they portray that character? If we would like to think of an example to use we don’t have to look any further than Mr. pop culture himself Kanye West.