Ethics for Media Professionals: Guiding Insights and Principles
Philippiniana Sacra, volume 47, issue 140 (2012), pp. 443-454
"[...] If social communications professionals are to ensure that their skills and knowledge are genuinely at the service of the general human good, and that they are enabling informed decision making in different contexts, they must be vigilant to maintain an ethical commitment to meeting the best interests of others over their own particular needs. One moral theologian has defined this commitment as requiring professionals not to view their skills and knowledge “as possessions for private financial gain or social status” but as talents to be put at service of others even if that is at a high personal cost and requires sacrifice. In his presentation to the Leveson Inquiry, Rusbridger expressed this same understanding: A free press is not there for the benefit of a group called journalists. It’s primarily there for the benefit of ordinary citizens. The freedoms belong to them – freely to receive reliable and timely information about their society.
The true measure of progress is not to be found in the technical or logistical efficiency of the new means of communications alone but in the purposes which they serve. Those in the media who use the new technologies are faced with a choice. They can seek to ensure that the new technologies, and the enhanced potential for communication that they offer are placed at the service of individuals and communities in their search for the truth or they can allow them to be used to promote their own interests and/or the interests of those they represent in ways that manipulate individuals and communities. This challenge has long been recognised, as Pope Benedict has pointed out: In one of the earliest reflections on the nature of communication, Plato highlighted the dangers of any type of communication that seeks to promote the aims and purposes of the communicator or those by whom he or she is employed without consideration for the truth of what is communicated. Speaking at theLeveson Inquiry, Richard Peppiatt, a former tabloid journalist, drew attention to the dangers that follow when this distinction is not observed: But the people caught in the crossfire of this cynical approach are the millions of readers who buy tabloid newspapers every day in good faith, unaware of the commercial and ideological agendas which are shaping what they read. Instead of being told the truth they deserve, they are being told whatever it suits newspapers to let them know.
It is only when new media technologies are used to serve the true well-being of individual persons and of human communities that we can say that they are truly instruments of progress. In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict stressed the need for a proper use of the new technologies: Just because social communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or internationalized development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity. Faculties of Communication should encourage those who will work in the media to attend to the great responsibilities that rest with them and to uphold the highest standards of their professions. In particular, they should be strengthened in their commitment to make known the truth and to defend it “against those who tend to deny or destroy it.” Media professionals ought to be invited to defend the ethical underpinnings of their profession and to ensure that the “centrality and the inviolable dignity of the human person” are always vindicated. They must be reminded that these ethical commitments can be eroded by factors such as competition for audiences, commercial pressures and ideological prejudices. It is interesting to note that nobody has sought to defend at the level of ethical principle the practises exposed in recent journalistic scandals (misinformation, gross invasions of privacy, plagiarism and the manipulation of sources) – the ethical crisis has been at the existential rather than the epistemological level." (Pages 447-448)
The true measure of progress is not to be found in the technical or logistical efficiency of the new means of communications alone but in the purposes which they serve. Those in the media who use the new technologies are faced with a choice. They can seek to ensure that the new technologies, and the enhanced potential for communication that they offer are placed at the service of individuals and communities in their search for the truth or they can allow them to be used to promote their own interests and/or the interests of those they represent in ways that manipulate individuals and communities. This challenge has long been recognised, as Pope Benedict has pointed out: In one of the earliest reflections on the nature of communication, Plato highlighted the dangers of any type of communication that seeks to promote the aims and purposes of the communicator or those by whom he or she is employed without consideration for the truth of what is communicated. Speaking at theLeveson Inquiry, Richard Peppiatt, a former tabloid journalist, drew attention to the dangers that follow when this distinction is not observed: But the people caught in the crossfire of this cynical approach are the millions of readers who buy tabloid newspapers every day in good faith, unaware of the commercial and ideological agendas which are shaping what they read. Instead of being told the truth they deserve, they are being told whatever it suits newspapers to let them know.
It is only when new media technologies are used to serve the true well-being of individual persons and of human communities that we can say that they are truly instruments of progress. In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict stressed the need for a proper use of the new technologies: Just because social communications increase the possibilities of interconnection and the dissemination of ideas, it does not follow that they promote freedom or internationalized development and democracy for all. To achieve goals of this kind, they need to focus on promoting the dignity of persons and peoples, they need to be clearly inspired by charity and placed at the service of truth, of the good, and of natural and supernatural fraternity. Faculties of Communication should encourage those who will work in the media to attend to the great responsibilities that rest with them and to uphold the highest standards of their professions. In particular, they should be strengthened in their commitment to make known the truth and to defend it “against those who tend to deny or destroy it.” Media professionals ought to be invited to defend the ethical underpinnings of their profession and to ensure that the “centrality and the inviolable dignity of the human person” are always vindicated. They must be reminded that these ethical commitments can be eroded by factors such as competition for audiences, commercial pressures and ideological prejudices. It is interesting to note that nobody has sought to defend at the level of ethical principle the practises exposed in recent journalistic scandals (misinformation, gross invasions of privacy, plagiarism and the manipulation of sources) – the ethical crisis has been at the existential rather than the epistemological level." (Pages 447-448)
