Team Morality

Maura Anderson
ma857214@ohio.edu

When one thinks of ethics as a strict code that an organization or whole profession must abide by, it's easy to assume that personal morality and gut instinct don't apply. However, our text Elements of Journalism notes that it is the human aspect of journalism that completely contradicts the idea that ethics isn't personal.

Morality vs Ethics

Chapter 10 lays out a fundamental principle of journalism, that "journalists have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience." The line between ethics and morality is therefore thinner than expected. Ethics, typically thought of as a very structured set of rules, is actually just organized and discussed morality. While every legitimate news source in the world has a defined code of ethics, it's crucial to remember that in the end it's really just team morality, with people doing what they think is right, and voicing their concerns to their peers. You could think of that team as the members of a newsroom, the "media" as a whole, or humans (the press) exercising their responsibility to be decent and helpful to other humans (the masses).

Humanity in Journalism

This idea of humanity as a guiding ethical principle is introduced in the following video.




The Director of Ethical Journalism Network explains that humanity as a core value means that journalists must consider their work a humanitarian act. Journalists have a responsibility to protect people from undue harm. This ties into every other major principle because not being accurate or accountable or independent or impartial (other main principles) can be inherently hurtful to the audience.

The Society of Professional Journalists lists their code of ethics with four main principles rather than the five discussed in the video.

Their "do no harm" rule is essentially the same idea as EJN's "humanity". Another interesting distinction between the two codes is the idea of truth as accuracy. The Society of Professional Journalists urges the media to "seek truth and report it," but "truth" can be a tricky term. In John Milton's ideal world, seeking that truth should be relatively easy. In a world full of clickbait and fake news, however, people might have different ideas of what is the truth, and they like to stick to their own personal truth.

This dilemma is addressed in EJN's code by referring to this principle as accuracy. The simple change in language shows that journalists must always be factual and credible, which will hopefully then report the elusive "truth".

In a landscape where even major codes aren't the same, journalists mustn't stray from the value of humanity. It is the binding principle that the rest build on, and without humanity, there's no point in reporting at all.