Ethics & Communication

Ethics & Communication

Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the "science of morality." In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is "good." The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy. This is one of the three major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics and epistemology.

Ethics can be divided into several categories such as descriptive ethics, metaethics, and normative ethics, applied ethics.

Descriptive Ethics

Simply involves describing how people behave and/or what sorts of moral standards they claim to follow.

Descriptive ethics will include research from the fields of anthropology; psychology, sociology and history in order to determine what people do or have believed about moral norms. Descriptive ethics is sometimes referred to as comparative ethics because so much activity can involve comparing ethical systems: comparing the ethics of the past to the present, comparing the ethics of one society to another and comparing the ethics which people claim to follow with the actual rules of conduct, which do describe their actions.

Descriptive ethics asks two basic questions:

1. What do people claim as their moral norms?

2. How do people actually behave when it comes to moral problems?

Metaethics

Investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean.

* Are they merely social inventions?

* Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions?

It is a philosophical study of the meaning, nature and methodology of moral judgments and terms, relations between moral concepts, the correct ways of arguing about moral issues, similarities and differences between various normative systems like morality, religion, law, etiquette, aesthetics, the judgments of taste, etc.

Normative ethics

Takes on the task of arriving at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others. Normative ethics is concerned with classifying actions as right and wrong without bias, as opposed to applied ethics.

Applied ethics

Involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war. By using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues.

The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry.

* For example, the issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior.

* But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure.

* The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, "where do rights come from?" and "what kind of beings have rights?"

The Media and Ethical Behavior

Communication is basic to being human, and is essential for social interaction.

Ethical issues are bound to arise because communication plays a significant role in influencing others, intent is so important as a motivation and we consciously choose to use a specific type of communication to get what we want

Why do we seem to attach so much importance to what the media do?

* The ethical decisions the media make affect large numbers of people.

* The decisions the media make should come under closer scrutiny than our own because they affect more people.

The media are also playing a different role from the one average citizens play. They are acting to inform us on matters about which we would otherwise have little knowledge. The rationale used by nearly all forms of media is that they are performing a public service by adding to the "marketplace of information."

Ethical behavior is required of media practitioners because of their moral obligations

* To themselves--to preserve their own integrity;

* To their clients--to honor contracts and to use their professional expertise on their client's behalf;

* To their organization or employer--to adhere to organizational goals and policies;

* To their profession and their professional colleagues--to uphold the standards of the profession and, by extension, the reputation of their fellow practitioners;

* To society--to consider social needs and claims.

The roles we take on as media practitioners imply a responsibility to perform certain functions associated with those roles.

Responsibility is defined as a "bundle of obligations associated with a job or function." Reporters are responsible for covering newsworthy events. As part of that responsibility, they are expected to present a fair and balanced account from an objective viewpoint.

Does responsibility equate to accountability? Accountability refers to blaming or crediting someone for an action normally associated with a recognized responsibility. The assumption would be to hold a person responsible for an