About the Book

Living Ethics
Across Media Platforms

Michael Bugeja

 

Synopsis

Acknowledgments

Excerpt

Sample Illustration

Contents

Course Materials

About the Author

ISBN13: 9780195188608
ISBN10: 0195188608

Paper, 368 pages

July 2007

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Synopsis

            Tom Brokaw, one of the most experienced broadcasters of our time, believes the key to success as a journalist or practitioner is a strong value system. He has felt this way since beginning his career in 1962 in Omaha. Three years later he took a job in Atlanta one to cover the civil rights movement and then moved to KNBC in Los Angeles to work as reporter and anchor. After covering the White House during the Watergate scandal, Brokaw was named anchor on “The Today Show” in 1976. Six years later he was named co-anchor with Roger Mudd on the NBC “Nightly News” and took over as sole anchor in July 1983. He retired in December 2004 but remains with NBC as a documentary producer and presenter. “After more than 30 years at this business of collecting, editing and disseminating information under the broad definition of news,” he states, “I am persuaded the most enduring personal rules of behavior are not so complicated. Yet they are profoundly important if the great freedoms we enjoy in American journalism are to flourish.” Brokaw has a motto that has guided him throughout his career: Truth may be elusive but integrity is not. Part of integrity is social responsibility. These tenets apply across platforms, especially in news. “Viewers and readers are best served and most supportive when they have a daily appreciation of the vigorous and fair-minded effort their newspaper or news program has made in their behalf,” he says. “Next, just as the press in all of its forms—print, television, radio—has a societal obligation to examine change and decisions that affect the public welfare, so, too, does the press have an obligation to be a watchdog for excesses and failures within journalism.”

Brokaw acknowledges that profit-minded media companies continue to be a concern, as covered in the last chapter on power. “Especially in this age of enormous competitive commercial pressure,” he states, “journalism does not have to be a non-profit or money-losing proposition to be successful and respectable but neither should its owners measure its value solely by the bottom line.” There is a reason. Unlike other businesses, the media derive its power from the First Amendment and as such, owe a debt to society. “Finally,” Brokaw says, “to be a journalist in a society governed by a Constitution that has as its First Amendment such an eloquent and robust statement of the place of a free press is an unparalleled privilege. It is a privilege that is best preserved and strengthened by an uncommon commitment to excellence by every journalist, whatever their station in the profession.”

            Value systems, in one way or another, reinforce work ethic, enumerate responsibilities and clarify mission. A value system is expressed in a code of ethics, which usually has a preamble, stating why the document is important, followed by an organizational statement of core principles. A code can even contain a pledge or an oath. These three components often reinforce the corporate or organizational mission statement, which differs from a code. A mission statement can have ethical components, but its intent is to state why a company or organization exists strategically and to state shared goals pertaining to all constituents, from employees to stockholders. Codes concern the behavior of those constituents. A good code also should have a central theme—an overriding principle of service or duty that guides and motivates an employee, an outlet or an entire company. In Tom Brokaw’s case, his was “a commitment to excellence.” Value systems may emphasize excellence, optimism, collaboration or a combination of values that represent equity, equality, quality, fairness or discretion. As such, codes of ethics document corporate or organizational culture.

True, there are problems with codes—ethical ones, namely—in that some companies herald their standards as part of a marketing or brand-name promotion. Others have codes that are on the books but not necessarily enforced. Some codes neglect to include statements about competence or work ethic, especially a commitment to research. As ethicist Claude-Jean Bertrand states in Media Ethics & Accountability Systems, codes often do not recommend that journalists and practitioners “do some homework before going on an assignment, dip into archives (or data banks), and consult experts."1

There can also be legal concerns about codes. According to Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center, “There is a traditional objection, often voiced by lawyers, that you cannot be sued—or lose a case—on the basis of an ethics code you don’t have. If newspapers say ‘thou shalt not steal’ and someone on the staff does, you have violated at least your own guideline as well as any applicable law. In a sense, you’re neutral if you don’t have any guidelines. At the least it’s more difficult to hold you accountable on so-called ethical grounds.” Conversely, it can be argued, especially in court, that the lack of an ethics code is evidence that management has not properly advised its employees about moral infractions. Because of this and other factors, Policinski’s “personal view is that you are better armed to go to court” if your company ensures that “the staff is fully informed about the code, that it is fully explored with every one to whom it applies and that it is fully-implemented—that it applies fairly and evenly across the staff—and is consistently applied.”

            Policinski’s view is also that of Living Ethics. Codes are not self-serving advertisements for clipbooks, resumes, Web sites, employee handbooks and annual stockholder reports. They are serious agreements about community and organizational standards. They require regular updating to take into account provisions that are unclear, underdeveloped or antiquated technologically. Many media companies were not prepared for the blogging phenomenon, for instance, and had to update their codes to articulate standards in new media and how they might apply across platforms.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Finally, to become a citizen, a person must take the U.S. Oath of Citizenship, which requires, among other things, that those seeking “membership” renounce allegiance to foreign states and support the Constitution.

The value of a personal or professional code of ethics, on a much lesser scale, of course, involves the same level of commitment. Again, this applies historically to our charter documents whose core principles—equality, liberty, pursuit of happiness and more—were not applied fairly, evenly and consistently across the U.S. population. Moreover, there have been those who argued fervently against putting into law many of these core principles on the grounds that mentioning them would create liabilities, including amendments that abolished slavery (Article XIII), or granted equal voting rights to men regardless of race (Article XV), or that granted equal voting rights to women (Article XIX). Again from a legal perspective, once a country, company and/or person formally commits on paper to a code, they can be held liable for infractions—not necessarily a bad thing, for sooner or later, as we have seen in history, we will be made to live up to lofty aspirations. In the end, the Constitution is a living document and amendments thereto, living ethics. Clauses have inspired and motivated millions, so much so, in fact, that the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal inscription, written by the U.S. poet Emma Lazarus, serves as our motto:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your
teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed,
to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.