The Evolution of Ethics in Media

Dylan Reines

dr183518@ohio.edu

It is a comfortably sunny day, you are walking down the street on your way to Chipotle when you notice the woman in front of you drops $20 on the ground. By the time you reach the fallen money the woman is barely visible amidst the crowd of people, and the cash is certainly enough to cover your meal. What do you do?

Finding the woman and returning her money would be the ethically correct response to the situation, but ethics are often harder in practice than on paper. There are numerous variables involved in every ethical decision, and what's considered "the right thing to do" may be a grey area in some situations.

Video source: Mark Grabowski, Youtube

Large corporations across the globe are responsible for some of the most impactful ethical decisions. These businesses constantly walk the line between increasing profit and making good ethical choices. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) provides a code of ethics to give corporations guidelines to make positive decisions, but the truth is often hard to find when engaging with enterprise media.

In the past, advertisers have lied to make their products more appealing. Taco Bell and Dannon's Activa Yogurt have both lost millions to false advertising in the last decade. The dishonesty of big brands has caused many Americans to become skeptical of the claims advertisers throw at them.

A 2021 study by YouGov found that 46% of Americans find television advertising trustworthy and only 19% of Americans find social media advertising trustworthy. The lack of trust Americans have in modern advertising shows that advertisers and public relations professionals are not doing a good job following ethical guidelines.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) describes their code as, "a framework to evaluate ethical behavior." Their code emphasizes that media professionals act accurately and fairly, show everyone respect, act independently, and be transparent in their writing. If media professionals had been following the SJP and PRSA codes more than 46% of Americans would trust the television commercials they watch.

Most younger Americans are aware that advertising can often be misleading. Current media professionals are producing more transparent content to appeal to dubious consumers, and as a result, their advertisements now more closely align with ethical codes.

Current advertising and PR professionals are trying to gain back the credibility their predecessors lost. The media content they produce follows the PRSA and SJP ethical guidelines more so than past content. We have yet to live in a world where businesses are 100% transparent with consumers but we're trending in the right direction. A code of ethics is something every journalist should adhere to, and media professionals are using ethical guidelines to build credibility for their brands and repair the damage done by past professionals.