Origin of Ethics

Chapter two of Controversies in Media Ethics by Gordon and Kittross discusses the origin of ethics. It discusses mostly ethics on the individual level in media. Since I am a journalism student I will focus on how the journalists develop their ethical values and what influences the decisions they make. First we will start with how journalists and more broadly people in general develop their ethics. Fred Endres did a study in 1985 with newspaper journalists. In his study, Endres found that parents and early home life was the biggest influence on their ethics. The next biggest influence was experience. I think that these are two things that have had an influence on me as well and can see how they would affect journalists. I would say that my upbringing has a big influence on me more so than my experience since I am relatively inexperienced.

            Weaver and Wilhoit did two studies of media professionals to get an idea of their ethics. They came up with the typical journalist: “A married white protestant male in his mid thirties with a bachelor’s degree from a public university with 12 years of experience.” This typical journalist had some of the same values that shaped his ethics as discovered by Endres. One main thing that Weaver and Wilhoit found was that this typical journalist believes he has to tell the citizens about the activity of the government and other public service aspects of the job. This can pose a problem to the ethics of a journalist. If they feel so strongly to serve the public they want to tell the public, but by doing so they may put the public at risk. For example when there was the sniper in Maryland the police kept saying that the shooters were in a white box truck, but journalists knew the police were not looking for a white box truck. The journalists printed what the police told them to help their investigation, but this did not serve the public any good. This is an ethics standpoint that they developed. Perhaps from their experience or maybe from even earlier in their childhood. Ethics are very interesting and impossible to tell where they are truly inherited. I think it varies from person to person. It is important to get a grasp of our roots and influences to really understand our ethics.

 

the following link has an essay that contains some of Weaver and Wilhoit’s material:

http://srreinardy.iweb.bsu.edu/beyondsatisfaction/litreview.html