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Jacquette, Dale. Journalistic Ethics: Moral
Responsibility in the Media (Basic Ethics in Action
Series).(Book review)
Communication Research Trends
September 1, 2010 | Way, Maria
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Jacquette, Dale. Journalistic Ethics: Moral Responsibility in the Media (Basic
Ethics in Action Series). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007. ISBN
0-13-182539-9 (pb.) $39.20 / 23.99 [pounds sterling].
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Jacquette sets out to offer a critical exploration of key concepts and the moral decision
making involved in journalistic ethics. In Britain, polls have consistently shown that
journalists are not trusted by the general public and this, together with the problems and
challenges that are presented by an ever more competitive industry, mean that
journalistic ethics are being questioned, possibly more than they have ever previously
been questioned before.
The book’s chapters begin with an introduction called “What Journalists Do?” and the
author sums up journalistic ethics in an injunction that journalists provide “maximally
relevant truth telling in the public interest” (p. 1), noting that this “seemingly innocent
sounding description” raises philosophical issues directly relevant to professional
journalism and that if we want to hold journalists to be morally responsible for the truthful
content of their product, then we must not ask them to do something that they are incapable
of doing–for instance, while a reporter may report on an earthquake, he/she cannot be
expected to stop that earthquake. Jacquette draws on Kant in saying that “ought” implies
“can,” but the two may be incompatible with actuality. To tell the truth is a noble idea (ibid.)
but can conflict with real-life pressures, some of which relate to the fact that publishing and
broadcasting are generally businesses, and general business ethics are not always
compatible with journalism. Journalists have special moralrights and responsibilities–as
do their consumers. It is for this reason that Jacquette (p. 3) writes that the journalistic
rights and responsibilities, moral rights and principles discussed in this book, are derived
from one single statement of the journalist’s professional calling: The moral imperative of
professional journalism, its purpose, and what it requires of its practitioners, is to provide
relevant truth telling in the public interest. Codes of ethics, the author says, give us valuable
insight into journalists’ perception of the limits within which they believe they must work in
order to gather, edit, and report news. (A variety of codes of practice are printed at the end
of the book, pp. 282-291.)
Jacquette notes (p. 4) that moral instruction, in the form of a professional 10
commandments, even though valuable, does not explain or justify the reasons that sets of
rules are appropriate. It is for this reason that Jacquette attempts to clarify journalism’s
aims and purposes and to reveal the philosophical basis of journalistic moral rights and
responsibilities. Journalistic ethics are, Jacquette says, a special topic area in applied
professional ethics (p. 11), and he adds that news has now become a form of entertainment.
In Britain, I once heard this summarized as “There is death, plague, war, and destruction in
various parts of the world, but, on the bright side, there is a poodle in Croydon which can
dance.” This infotainment, he notes, brings its own moral issues, but he adds that
entertainment pieces can assist in the knitting together of a community; assist in allowing
us to understand current events differently, sometimes through their comic values; and can
provide perspectives on popular culture. This can often be justified as being in the public
interest. I found the most worrying part of this chapter the initial quotation from Geoffrey C.
Ward: “Journalism is merely history’s first draft” (p. xiii). While I have myself studied old
newspapers during research projects, one can often see bias coming through. How do we
draw history from such broadcasting and press? Will Internet journalism (often freer) be
archived and accessible in the future? More immediately, how do consumers draw truthful
information from media?
Truth telling is the topic of Chapter 1. Jacquette uses three case studies, two of which are
cases that are perhaps more familiar to the American constituency, while the “Newsweek
and the Holy Koran at Guantanamo Bay” example will be more familiar elsewhere. The
author points to the problems associated with a variety of stories, noting that journalists
would be wrong to try to satisfy what they themselves consider morally objectionable
interests–through giving confidential medical information about people, for instance. The
chapter, like all the others, ends with a summary of its content.
Chapter 2 considers journalistic rights and responsibilities and journalists’ legal and
moralrights, again with three case studies. Chapter 3, “Moral Ideals and Workaday
JournalisticRealities” deals with moral ideals and possible conflicts between these ideals
and the market reality. In this chapter, Jacquette considers four case studies and the pros
and cons of the mass media age. He suggests that while television is a good way to spread
news, it can also be a highly profitable business and there may here be a clash between
responsibility and the need to contribute to a profitable business, which brings its own
problematics. He also looks at problems raised by possible conflicts between the need to
keep advertising sponsorship and income-drawing benefactors, and the need to report
truthfully or, indeed, to report on a story at all. Journalists also face a conflict between the
need to keep a business profitable and their need to stand firm against financial
intimidation (pp. 80ff.).
Chapter 4 discusses press freedom. The free press, he writes, is an ideal moral abstraction
and so draws all the same ambiguities and qualifications as discussions on freedom in
general (p. 95). He states that notions of press freedom would not be expected to include
license to publish child pornography, sensitive military secrets, or instructions on how to
make pipe bombs. A society, he writes (p. 97), is particularly at risk of undermining press
freedom when its vital interests are threatened by the availability of certain types of
information. At this point, responsible leaders must take measures to help citizens to
become more secure by preventing potentially damaging facts from being too widely
disseminated, and he points to the qualification of the free exercise of the free press in a
worst case scenario (Trager & Dickerson, 1999). In the U.S., he says, there is constitutional
protection of journalistic freedoms and this, if on the right track, correctly formulates an
ethical ideal of press freedom (p. 99). While he asks what the significance of appending a
Bill of Rights to the Constitution might be, he notes that there are no definitive answers to
his question, but suggests that this is a product of the Englightenment, itself almost an
exclusive product of European philosophy and science. While this had an effect, many in
early American society still equated morality and political authority with religious dogma
and this was problematic. The fathers of the American nation wished to limit the impact of
religious dogma on the social fabric. This fear or concern, together with religious wars,
Inquisitions, “holy” Crusades, and internecine conflict between different sects assisted in
the enforcement of legal separation between Church and state (p. 105). While nobody was
legally bound or forbidden from practicing a religion, and no religion was awarded privilege
under the U.S. Constitution, religion was not to be a actor in political decision-making. The
case study, printed from page 115 onwards, considers a 2003 report from Reporters Without
Borders noting that the united States and Italy have relatively low rankings in regard to
press freedom, further noting that wealth and press freedom are not always related.
Chapter 5, “Censorship and Witholding Information for the Greater Good,” begins by saying
that a free press (and we must extrapolate from this, free media) is among the most
important moral rights of a free people and journalists must take advantage of this right,
from which every person ideally benefits (p. 126). Following the previous observation that
press freedom is neither an absolute nor an unconditional freedom, journalism must be
exercised within limits established on a society’s legitimate interests, particularly where
security and individual societal members’ protection are concerned. He notes that there are
real-life situations where fundamental journalistic ethics to maximize relevant truth
telling must be qualified by the public interest. In such cases, there must be a sufficiently
good reason for censorship, or the voluntary withholding of information, for the greater
good, and there must always be explicit provision for the restoration of full journalistic
freedom as soon as possible. Following an exploration of the philosophical and historical
background to censorship, Jacquette writes that an exact explanation and philosophical
justification of censorship, as well as a proper theory of censorship, is important in deciding
whether censorship is justified. This prevents censorship abuse and can prevent censors
from “taking society down a slippery slope leading to more and more censorship, less and
less freedom of the press, and finally to the subversion and co-option of a free press for
purposes of political, religious, or big business propaganda” (p. 129). He suggests that there
are three principles for the control of censorship: the Interdependence of a Free Society and
a Free Press; the obligation to Maximize Relevant Truth, and the Distinguishing of Morally
Justified Censorship. To test these principles, he looks at a number of so-called “hard
cases.”
Chapter 6 considers the protection of confidential sources and problems caused by the use
of such sources to application of the fundamental moral principles of journalistic ethics.
Journalists must provide relevant truth telling in the public interest, but problems attached
to the use of confidential sources are particularly interesting here. The chapter explores
ethics relating to the use and protection of anonymous news sources and notes that these
issues are more complex than may at first be thought, but the chapter concludes that
journalists have a moral right and responsibility for the use and protection of these
confidential sources. InChapter 7, questions are raised about privacy and about the
breaking of contracts, such as the publication of photographs of celebrity weddings granted
to one magazine when another publishes “spoiler” pictures. When is it right to publish
photographs or stories about “celebrities” when they may want privacy? Does their
“celebrityhood” abnegate normal privacy needs and normal common decency? Is it right, I
would ask, to broadcast or print pictures of bereaved people going to see the body of their
lost loved one or to film family members at a funeral? In Italy, there often cases where
reporters thrust microphones almost up the nose of bereaved parents when a child has been
lost, either in a natural disaster or through murder. How can this be justified? How are
parents supposed to feel in such a case, and why should they be asked? He also writes here
about the reporting of suicides and, once again, uses the example of the paparazzi involved
in the “Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed” tragedy. Will they never be allowed to rest in
peace?
Chapter 8 studies objectivity, perspective, and bias. What exactly is objectivity? Without
high standards of objectivity, Jacquette says (p. 209), journalists cannot be expected to
deliver the quality of news-reporting that informed decision-making may require. To
continue, he looks at the notion that journalists may be in breach of journalistic ethics
when they “become part of the story.” As he says, there is not a cut-and-dried response to
this question. Here, he notes that technology may mean that there is “an almost irresistible
incentive for journalists to place themselves on the ground of news occurrences in order to
send back immediate photostreams and commentary” (p. 210). In an era of 24 hour news
broadcasts, the channels have a gaping maw that must be fed and, in my opinion, this has
dangers. The need to get the story first, the scoop, has resulted in the need to be even
speedier than before. This means that stories are often broadcast or published with little
elaboration. As Jacquette notes, persons under observation often behave differently than
they otherwise would, and while journalists are emphatically not supposed to create news in
order to have something on which to report (ibid.), there are ways in which journalists can
have a part in the events on which they are supposed to report that is both less obvious and
less morally objectionable. Journalists are supposed to observe and report, but in a war
zone it would be difficult for them not to become involved inthe events which they must
observe and report. Sometimes, the events in which they are involved result in the
journalist becoming so repulsed that he/she becomes morally and intellectually incapable of
remaining objective (p. 214). Examples given here are of Bosnia and Rwanda. While
objectivity is to be lauded, I cannot but think that it would be a poor journalist who did not
become morally, intellectually, and emotionally involved in reporting on, say, a genocide.
Even that luminary of British broadcasting, Richard Dimbleby, could not entirely disguise
his emotions on entering a concentration camp at the end of World War II. on page 232,
Jacquette writes that there are strains of contemporary philosophy that argue that all efforts
to discover and share truths are doomed to failure due to the layering of interpretations
between perception and judgement. Such scepticism has now gone beyond the philosophers
and has gained credence with many others. This poses particular challenges to journalistic
truth telling. From this viewpoint, there are no facts but only interpretations, so interpreters
will gravitate towards one way of considering something rather that to another. This
intellectual culture has spread to journalists, he suggests. other problems that arise in
regard to bias, objectivity, and perspective are the use of conjecture and speculation in the
news as well as use of unsubstantiated polls and opinion. Where one stops people to poll
them, who those people are, and how questions are asked, will affect the results obtained
and when, as Jacquette suggests in relation to the 2000 American Presidential election,
such unfounded results are given as concrete evidence, they may affect the eventual results.
Yet, one must remember, as he says, they have no more background truth than does
consulting Tarot cards or the Ouija board (p. 239).
Chapter 9 pursues the topic of journalistic perspective through consideration of the ethics
of editorial license. Jacquette notes that opinion columns in newspapers, or comment
pieces inbroadcasting, mean that opinions rather than facts are put into the public domain.
While there is, as the author agrees, a place for such opinion pieces, they must be
acknowledged as such and be differentiated from articles that report fact. Here, he
compares the rights and responsibilities of the editorial staff with those of the journalist.
The fact-value gap is studied philosophically and there is a short discussion on “spin.” It is
evident that, as Jacquette says (p. 260), the moral choices of those involved in editing and
writing editorials must be questioned and answered just as much as the choices made by
those reporting stories must. As part of this chapter, the author suggests professional
editorial guidelines for editorial writers and ways to promote editorial pluralism. To my
mind, the way to do this is by having a media industry that has the possibility to broadcast
or publish a variety of opinions. Just because one does not agree with the editorial of a
particular newspaper or broadcaster, it does not mean that that person or company should
not be free to express it. It is on this that freedom of speech should be based–and here I am
not suggesting that we accept hate speech. However, as recent elections have shown in
Europe, there is a fairly large group of people who have certain unpopular and even
distressing viewpoints–freedom of speech should mean that we can argue with them loudly
and vocally, while respecting that they are free to believe certain things.
The final chapter is about journalism as a force for social good, using both historical and
more contemporary examples (Twain’s Congo pamphlet, the London 7/7 bombings, and
Hurricane Katrina). Jacquette repeats Stobel’s theory that a
free press will enable a free people to reach the
right decisions about what its government is
doing both domestically and in its foreign policy.
Journalism makes the facts available in such
a compelling fashion that no government in a
free pluralistic society can in the long run sustain
a morally objectionable decision. (p. 278)
He notes that, once again, new technologies may have some bearing on truthful
reporting–the possibilities presented by digital photography, for instance. Technology,
following Postman, “encourages if not necessitates the transformation of informative
journalistic reporting and analysis, with its almost exclusive lock on viewing time and the
public’s information, into a dangerous form of entertainment” (p. 279). Technology,
Postman avers, is not innocent, and Jacquette suggests that the ideal would be for
governments, regardless of technology, to be prevented from bending “a free and
independent press … to the government’s purpose” (p. 250), and that the free press helps a
nation to properly guide itself.
The book has an extensive bibliography and is well-referenced. Given its summaries and the
questions it asks in each of its chapters, together with the case studies that it employs, this
book would be particularly useful for media and journalism students and their teachers,
but also for those studying history, politics, and philosophy. In addition, anyone interested
in the news or who works as a journalist would find it useful and interesting. It is both
informative an thought-provoking.
–Maria Way
Journalism & Mass Communication
university of Westminster
Reference
Trager, R. & Dickerson, D. L. (1999). Freedom of expression in the 21st century. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
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