Media Ethics

Sanitation is the provision of facilities for safe removal
of human excreta; it forms major part of environment we
live in. Open defecation is the practice of defecating in
open. 600 million Indians defecate openly,
contaminating water resources, contaminated water and
lack of personal hygiene causes diseases. 30 million
suffer from water related illnesses yearly in India. The
most vulnerable are rural women and children who
suffer illness like gastroenteritis, amoebiasis, malaria,
and dengue and hook worm. Present sanitation coverage
in Karnataka is only 27%.
Media plays a crucial role in educating people about
sanitation, ill effects of open defecation on health and
environment. In this age of technology, newspapers have
not lost their impact. Readership is still strong as ever.
Regional newspapers have immense effect on readers,
through which information on sanitation can be
disseminated. This study focuses on weightage given to
issues of open defacation, relevance and usefulness of
information since the launch of Swachh Bharat Yojan by
the honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi on
2nd October 2014. Newspapers reports on sanitation,
special stories, editorials, interviews, photos, and letters
to the editors are accounted for. Content analysis was
applied to study two leading Kannada newspapers –
Prajavani and Vijaya Karnataka, for a period of 6
months. To shed light on the role of print media, in-depth
interviews of media experts have been conducted. The
study shows that news regarding sanitation has been
given significantly lower importance in the newspapers.

Key words: Sanitation, open defecation, environment,
Kannada newspapers, news coverage, In-depth
interview

ABSTRACT As news media face declining levels of trust, research has suggested that partisans may differ in their views of news media. Depending on their ideological positions, partisans may have different perceptions of how faithfully news media adhere to journalistic norms. This study explores the intersections of ideology, perceived ethical performance of news media, trust in news media, and news participatory behaviors. Our analyses of data from a national representative survey of 452 respondents show that liberals are more likely than conservatives to perceive that news media operate ethically. More important, we found that liberals trust news media more than conservatives because of this evaluation. Our results also suggest that participation in news is positively related to ethical performance evaluations, which partly account for different levels of participation between conservatives and liberals. Implications for regaining media trust and encouraging participatory practices are discussed.

The Media Ethics Initiative (www.mediaethicsinitiative.org) aims to publicize and promote cutting-edge research on the ethical and moral dimensions of media use in democratic society. By bringing together experts on a variety of communication arenas and from a range of Moody College departments, the Initiative will create a community of scholars dedicated to rigorous and creative approaches to tough decisions and ethical issues in communication and media. The Initiative also aims to promote respectful and reflective discussion over these difficult issues in media ethics in our graduate and undergraduate student communities. By uniting academic researchers whose work engages normative issues in communication, the Initiative will serve as a sustained presentation of expertise on media and communication ethics to the University of Texas community and beyond.

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics’ (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of ‘environmental’ ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deserts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse.

This is a story about stories. Who writes them. Who owns them and what happens when the two things get muddled. It’s a story about true stories, life stories, stories written by amateurs
and professionals. It sounds a warning to the growing number of readers who aspire to publish their own memoirs, and those who write the lives of others.

Der Beitrag interpretiert die Forderung nach einer Algorithmen-Ethik als exemplarischen Ausdruck für die verschiedenen medienethischen Herausforderungen durch die Digitalisierung der Kommunikation. Davon ausgehend zielt der Text eine ethische Reflexion für den Bereich der öffentlichen Kommunikation an. Die These lautet, dass die Folgen der Digitalisierung Auswirkungen haben auf die Freiheit öffentlicher Kommunikation. Um diese These zu prüfen, beginnen die Überlegungen mit der Macht der Algorithmen und den sozialen Phänomenen, die hinter der Internetnutzung liegen. In einem politisch-ethischen Zugriff wird daraufhin die Bedeutung der Freiheit öffentlicher Kommunikation betont und gefragt, ob diese Freiheit in der digitalen Medienwelt bedroht ist. Die Argumentation endet mit handlungsorientierten Überlegungen zur Zukunft der öffentlichen Kommunikation in Zeiten des Internets.

What ethical challenges arise when you make a dramatized film with popular actors and actresses about a serial killer? A case study on Netflix's recent foray into films about Ted Bundy. Authored by Irie Crenshaw & Scott R. Stroud. More case studies at www.mediaethicsinitiative.org.

This article examines the relationship between fake news and social media as increasingly important sources of news, at a time when mainstream media no longer have exclusive control over news production and dissemination. It has been evident that few media outlets and professionals tend to draw conflicting news about COVID-19 from social media feeds, which are largely produced by common citizens with mostly no journalism training. This pervasive use makes social media key sources to scores of media outlets for news, whether it is related to COVID-19 or public affairs issues, even though it is susceptible to torrents of credibility and accuracy issues.
As a result, of the overwhelming spread of fake news on coronavirus, which is contributing to framing events from several angles, media professionals are now obliged to track and vet information circulating on social media. Due to the scale of disinformation spreading on the Web, it has become imperative that the credibility and accuracy of news is thoroughly verified. Media organizations have already been putting in place various mechanisms to monitor false news.
This article will attempt to identify and assess these monitoring efforts in the Arab world. For this purpose, I have put together a list of Arab observatories launched on the internet in order to monitor fake news circulating in relation to COVID-19, and to discuss their methods of monitoring work, in the context of mobilization carried out by governments and many organizations such as the World Health Organization.
This article is pinned down on social responsibility approach which helps pave the way the different propositions to combat fake news and avoid abuses in social media uses. This article proposes an evaluation of the monitoring initiative via-a-vis fake news and proposes a set of guidelines for improving the work of such monitoring bodies. Hence, this research reveals that social media outlets have diversified their goals to match the power of the conventional media in disseminating information and bringing up issues for debate. However, in the light of the framework of social responsibility, social media actors have to constantly develop a set of ethical practices to be observed by users, establish codes of conduct regulating content production, and lay down a code of integrity to assure accuracy in news and information transmission.

A comprehensive book on media ethics dealing with the concept of ethics and as it applies to various forms of media content- in print, broadcasting, advertising public relations and Internet. Also gives selected codes of ethics and deals with press councils. ombudsman and some regulatory bodies.

This paper analyzes the role of ethics, privacy and technology in Netflix's South Korean survival drama, Squid Game (2021). The show's popularity hinges on its mordant critique of capitalism, particularly the global disappearance of the middle class. This tension between personal and communal survival intersects with despair, surveillance and the illusion of consent.

Did Gillette go too far in connecting the fight against toxic masculinity to its shaving products? A case study on the ethical challenges that occur when corporations engage social issues in their advertising campaigns. Authored by Grace Holland & Scott R. Stroud. More case studies at www.mediaethicsinitiative.org.

To combat the rising tide of online harassment many women are turning to counterspeech as a way of fighting digital misogyny. We explore the range of feminist counterspeech by engaging two representative case studies from the current online environment. The first example analyzed is Anna Gensler, a feminist who uses her artistic talents and social media as a way to shame harassers and misogynistic men. The second case study explored is TrollBusters, an organization dedicated to fighting the online bullying of females. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the various normative values involved in choosing a strategy of counterspeech, as well as the various ethical concerns that circulate around each strategy represented by the two case studies analyzed in this chapter.

This is a unique opportunity for early career researchers to join The Alan Turing Institute. The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) is the UK’s new national institute for data science, established to bring together world-leading expertise to provide leadership in the emerging field of data science. The Institute has been founded by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL and Warwick and the EPSRC.

This is a targeted call, by which we intend to recruit researchers in subjects currently underrepresented by our fellowship cohort. Fellowships are available for 3 years with the potential for an additional 2 years of support following interim review. Fellows will pursue research based at the Institute hub in the British Library, London. Fellowships will be awarded to individual candidates and fellows will be employed by a joint venture partner university (Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, UCL or Warwick).

Introduction
The twentieth century history of political journalism in Denmark is typically told as a story of a gradual transformation of a partisan press both personally and organizationally closely intertwined with the major political parties into relatively impartial news media central to most political processes but relatively independent of both political and economic pressures. In this chapter, I will argue that Danish political journalism from the late 1990s onwards has begun to move beyond the late-twentieth century independent news media towards a situation increasingly defined by a new and intensified competition for audiences, for advertising, and for privileged access to the authoritative sources that can generate journalistic scoops. With a term taken from institutional theory, we might think of this historical development as a change in the Danish “news regime” (defined as a relatively stable set of rules and resources for the production of news (Ryfe, 2006)).

Knjiga je podijeljena u dvije cjeline te je prije svega namijenjena studentima novinarstva. Prva cjelina obrađuje povijest novinstva kroz sljedeće teme: 1) Zašto istraživati novine (Tehnike u zaštiti starih novina, Stare novine dostupne za istraživanje, Kako istraživati novine, Analiza sadržaja kao metoda pročavanja medija, Specifičnosti analize sadržaja tiskanih medija te Osobine novina), 2) Kratki povijesni razvoj novina u svijetu (Prve tiskane novine, Pojava modernih novina, Korijeni žutog novinarstva i razvoj tabloida, Evolucija naslovnica dnevnih novina te Razvoj i karakteristike magazina), 3) Kratki povijesni razvoj novina u Hrvatskoj (Pojava prvih novina, Prve novine na hrvatskom jeziku, Novinstvo u prvoj polovici 20. stoljeća te Razvoj i ekspanzija Vjesnikove kuće – unutar potpoglavlja obrađene su dnevne novine te nauspješniji tjednici i mjesečnici te kuće ; Novine u Hrvatskoj od 1990-ih do danas ; Nestanak starih i razvoj novih tjednika i mjesečnika ; Današnje tržište dnevnih novina). Druga velika cjelina tiče se etike novinarstva, a progovara o sljedećim temama: Etika poziva, Definicije i povijesni razvoj etike novinarstva, Društvena odgovornost novinara i medija, Vjerodostojnost novinara i medija, Etički kodeksi, načela i zakoni o medijima, Prava i obveze novinara, Sankcije za kršenje etike novinarstva, Etičnost novinskih naslovnica). Unutar te cjeline nalazi se istraživanje – Etičnost naslovnica dnevnih novina na primjeru Jutarnjeg lista i Večernjeg lista unutar kojega se prezentirao model od šest kategorija za analiziranje etičkih prijepora u dnevnim novinama. Zadnje poglavlje progovara o suvremenim izazovima etike novinarstva.

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has gained traction in humanitarian communication through its utopian promises of co-presence, experiential immediacy, and transcendence. I analyze three communication texts that engage with the Syrian refugee crisis. Two were made using immersive technology, while one is a traditional documentary. The paper argues that while VR brings new techniques of experiential immediacy to the practice of humanitarian communication, it also utilizes meaning-making codes in the simulations of other peoples and spaces. Therefore, VR remains subject to the operations of dominant ideologies. Comparing these artifacts, the paper demonstrates that although immersive technologies foreground the primacy of non-mediation, ignoring the structures of representation defangs the political possibilities of humanitarian communication.

For broadcast media in India, self-regulation is a mantra for its assertion of its independence from government control.  Self-regulation of private broadcast news media in India is in its infancy. But in the five years since it came into operation, how has the NBSA acquitted itself?
An examination of the efficacy of self-regulation in broadcast news media must include a larger scrutiny of the involvement of the public and a debate on how the agency of the audience can be developed and nurtured to ensure more accountability of the media.

Due to the rapidly changing norms and constant developments in technology, media and communication educators and practitioners are expected to (re)evaluate the functioning of ethics and reasoning in this field. This chapter discusses the relationship between ethics, reasoning, and the media, and the
integral role of ethical reasoning education for communication and media professionals. Ethical systems and theories are discussed to inform the debate on the importance of ethics and reasoning education. Globalization and the growing interconnectivity of global media systems are presented, providing insight on how different media systems function around the world. The large impact that the media have on
society necessitates the possession of rational and ethical skills; thus, the connection between reasoning and ethics is explained.

This essay proposes a detailed justification model that includes decision criteria beyond those of the widely used Potter Box.  The model's steps, which correspond to Kohlberg's stages of moral development, encourage journalists to examine the relative morality of their decisions on multiple levels.  These rationales include: 1) avoiding punishment and evaluating potential personal rewards, 2) identifying stakeholders, loyalties, and fair exchange, 3) weighing interpersonal expectations, 4) evaluating organizational policy, precedent and values, 5) conducting a cost-benefit analysis to determine the greatest good for the greatest number, and most importantly, 6) universalizing the decision through a caring response and just distribution of resources.

Fiji’s media landscape has been challenged by the consequences of Fiji’s own political struggles (Pareti, 2009; Perrottet & Robie, 2011; Singh, 2010a; S. B. Singh, 2018). While scholars and policy analysts have pointed out the nuances of these consequences, the latest onslaught to Fiji’s media landscape is irresponsible citizen journalism, specifically the morbid use of social media. Social media in Fiji has grown exponentially due to the increasing interconnectivity and proliferation of affordable data and mobile devices. This has enabled greater access and active online interactions, creating a massive potential for responsible and constructive social media use. However, ease of online access has revealed an almost inhumane and morbid form of social media use. This Brief argues that Fiji’s media landscape, already challenged by Fiji’s political struggles, is facing pressure from irresponsible citizen journalism. This is compounded by the quick pace and real time nature of social media. In discussing this argument, the Brief examines a recent fatality that highlights this pressure and its implications on the media and social media in Fiji.

Native advertising, defined as the practice by which a marketer borrows from the credibility of a content publisher by presenting paid content with a format and location that matches the publisher’s original content, has been the primary driving engine of the Internet marketing economy for several years. Spending on native advertising is projected to grow from $4.7 billion in 2013 to $21 billion by 2018 (Hoelzel, 2015), and advertising agencies are not only using native broadly but also hoping to increase their usage (Aldridge, 2016). While a majority of online marketing seeks to narrowly target users based on topic, through the use publication audience data, user tracking, collaborative filtering, and other techniques, native advertising not only gives users content that matches the topic of the publishers’ original content but also does so by copying the format of nonpaid content. Native advertising can take a wide variety of forms, ranging from sponsored posts on social media platforms, sponsored articles and videos on sites that publish original content, and sponsored links and recommendation blocks on content providers and Web search engines.

ახალგაზრდა დემოკრატიის ქვეყნებში, როგორიც საქართველოა, მედიის თვითრეგულირების სისტემა კვლავ მყიფეა. ონლაინ მედიის განვითარებამ კი ეს სისტემა ახალი გამოწვევების წინაშე დააყენა.
კვლევის მიზანია, გაანალიზოს ის პრობლემები, რაც ქართულ ონლაინ მედიას აქვს სოციალური ქსელების გამოყენებისას ეთიკური თვალსაზრისით. ნაშრომში გამოკვლეულია შემდეგი საკითხები: ვის აკისრია პასუხისმგებლობა სიძულვილის ენის შემცველი კომენტარების გამოქვეყნებაზე, არღვევენ თუ არა ჟურნალისტები ეთიკურ სტანდარტებს, როდესაც სოციალურ ქსელებში გამოქვეყნებულ მოსაზრებებს კომენტარად იყენებენ და რამდენად ეთიკურია ჟურნალისტების მიერ სოციალურ ქსელებში პირადი მოსაზრების დაფიქსირება იმ საკითხებზე, რაზეც მუშაობენ.
ამ საკითხების გამოსაკვლევად გამოყენებულია როგორც თვისებრივი, ასევე რაოდენობრივი კვლევის მეთოდი. კერძოდ, თვისებრივი კვლევის მეთოდად შერჩეულია სიღრმისეული ინტერვიუ, ხოლო რაოდენობრივი კვლევის მეთოდად - კონტენტ ანალიზი. სიღრმისეული ინტერვიუები ჩატარდა ხუთ ყველაზე პოპულარულ საზოგადოებრივ - პოლიტიკური ონლაინ გამოცემის რედაქტორთან (Liberali.ge, Netgazeti.ge, News.ge, Droni.ge და Tavisupleba.org) დამატებით შვიდ მედიაექსპერტთან. განხორციელდა ზემოთაღნიშნული ხუთი ვებგვერდის კონტენტ ანალიზი იმის გასარკვევად, თუ რა კონტექსტში და რა ფორმით იყენებდნენ ისინი სოციალურ ქსელებში გავრცელებულ ინფორმაციას საკუთარ მასალებში.

In our digitalized world, gigantic amounts of data are generated, creating a hitherto unknown need for communication, storage and processing. Mechanical processes and autonomous procedures are becoming increasingly important. Currently public attention is focused especially on the so-called artificial intelligence. In their new book, Julian Nida-Rümelin and Nathalie Weidenfeld provide substantial orientation in this broad field. Remarkably, this book also provides constructive offers for ethical-theological reflection.

Values and norms for communication expressed in the ancient Egyptian treatise, The Teachings of Ptahhotep, are compared to current regulatory communication standards, especially the IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, and to liberal and socialist ideologies. Ptahhotep argued in favour of basic equalities, respect, and the free flow of information and opinions, particularly for political speech, much like social democracy and political liberalism do. He also set limits regarding freedom of communication similarly: for hate speech, incitement to violence, defamation, invasion of privacy, and concentration of ownership. The parallels between the principles of communication ethics in ancient Egypt and today are partly explained with a look at similarly restructuring powers of innovative phonographic media (writing) then and prographic (electronic programming) media now, and partly with (probably indirect) influence. The article also asks whether the concept of ‘Western civilization’ should continue to exclude ancient Egypt.

The article is an attempt to show fake news as a complex phenomenon in the media space, the dangers of which can not be underestimated. In the first part, author, recalling international research, tries to determine the essence of this phenomenon, as well as its global scale of occurrence and impact. The capper of the text is a presentation of a set of good practices that will help defend against disinformation in the media.

The US media system is primarily a commercial one dominated by a small number of lightly regulated corporations, and offset by weak public alternatives. This was not inevitable ; it resulted from the outcomes of specific policy battles and from specific values triumphing. One way of understanding this logic is to focus on "corporate libertarianism", which emphasizes negative freedoms (freedom from) as opposed to positive ones (freedom for). Historically, much US media law and policy has been framed in negative terms, exemplified by the First Amendment. But there are also largely forgotten traditions that draw from a positive rights discourse. This social democratic orientation privileges media diversity and protects collective rights held by publics, audiences, and communities over the individual rights of corporations. Drawing from historical case studies, this chapter considers media policies for the digital age founded on positive freedoms.

This report aims to illustrate the effects of excessive and uncontrolled publicity of criminal cases on basic human rights, such as fair trial, the presumption of innocence, and the right to private life, and to explore ways in which the latter could be balanced against the freedom of speech and the right to information. The examination of twelve criminal cases in four different EU Member States has shed light on various patterns and common malpractices of. media practitioners and public authorities. International non-legal instruments providing recommendations and guidance on communicating information about criminal proceedings to the public include standards that address two main audiences: 1) public authorities such as law enforcement agencies and judicial practitioners, and 2) media practitioners and journalists. The selected criminal cases are analysed in the context of the recommended standards for communicating information on ongoing criminal cases with the aim to demonstrate gross and widespread misconducts or negligence in relation to the presumption of innocence.

Th e 1940s was a contentious decade for US media policy. Activists, policy- makers, and media industries grappled over defining the normative foundations that governed major communication and regulatory institutions. At this time, a reform agenda took shape at both the grassroots social movement level and within elite policy circles. An analysis of the rise and fall of this postwar media reform movement
holds at least three key lessons for contemporary media activists. First, it reminds us of the imperative to maintain a strong inside/outside strategy that keeps regulators connected to the grassroots. Second, we learn that media activists retreat on structural reform objectives at their own peril. Finally, we must remember that media reform rises and falls with other political struggles and radical social movements. With these lessons in mind, media reformers should seek to build liberal- left coalitions and, perhaps, a new popular front.