"Like the first edition, issued in 2009, this book is intended to inform your professional life. Technically, it is published as a textbook for college courses in journalism ethics and communications ethics, and as the ethics textbook in a course combining journalism ethics and law. I hope that practicing journalists – especially young men and women who did not take journalism courses in college – will also find it useful for its comprehensive discussion of the standards of the profession. If you fit those categories of student journalist and practicing journalist, you will find yourself addressed directly in this book. I reach out to you in two ways: first, to help you learn to make ethically defensible decisions in the practice of journalism; and, second, to give you the benefit of the thinking of generations of professionals and scholars that resulted in today’s consensus guidelines for ethical conduct. With these goals in mind, I have divided the book into two parts. Part I examines ethics in a general way, shows the relevance of ethics to journalism, and outlines a decision-making strategy. Part II discusses specific subject areas in which journalists frequently confront ethical problems. Throughout the book, the consensus guidelines are explained, not to dictate your decision-making but to offer a starting point for thinking through the issues. The idea is that you don’t have to start from a zero base; you can build on the best thinking of those who have gone before. Where there is disagreement in the profession, I have noted that, too. In several instances I advocate for what I consider to be best practice." (Preface)