Abstract
Among media ethicists such as Cliff Christians, the longtime Holy Grail has been a worldwide journalism ethics code. Stephen J. A. Ward has now devoted an entire book to this specific effort, following his 2010 Global Journalism Ethics and his co-edited (with Herman Wasserman) 2009 Media Ethics Beyond Borders: A Global Perspective. Ward, a Canadian former journalist who has held key posts at the universities of British Columbia, Oregon, and Wisconsin–Madison, also wrote The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond (2005), and holds three philosophy degrees.
The “Ward Code for Global Integrated Ethics,” which he calls a “first draft” (p. 218) is left until the appendix to emphasize both that others will have their own versions of a global media ethics code and the groundwork he has laid through an Introduction and nine chapters.
Ward is very careful to explain every point and sub-point that he makes throughout the book and when, for whatever reason, he does not want to repeat at length some argument or details he has written about before, he refers readers to one of his previous books. Otherwise, he does not assume readers know much more about ethics other than they exist and that utilitarianism has been the dominant tradition in democracy and journalism. (Kant is barely noted and then only for his psychology claims, although journalism’s absolute prohibitions of inaccuracy, fabrication, plagiarism, bribery, and conflicts of interest, among others, are Kantian categorical imperatives of a type.)
By “radical,” Ward quotes the Oxford English Dictionary, “going to the root or origin . . . affecting what is fundamental; far-reaching; thorough” (p. 3). By “integrated,” Ward means the opposite of “fragmented,” for example, different ethics codes for professionals versus amateurs, Americans versus Greeks, New York Times reporters versus the archetypal bedroom blogger in his underwear. Ward never specifically says that U.S. ethics codes alone come from an alphabet soup of organizations (American Society of News Editors, Associated Press, National Press Photographers Association, Online News Association, Public Relations Society of America, Radio Television Digital News Association, Society of Professional Journalists, various media companies, and many others) or that dozens of countries each have their own. But that is implied in addition to his repeated point that major fragmentation is due to the Internet-based “media revolution.”
The sentence best summarizing Ward’s motivation for a global media ethics code is “News media are global in reach, impact, and content as they report on global issues or events, whether the issue is immigration, climate change, or international security” (p. 100).
Chapter 1 is “Ontology of Ethics,” 2 is “Ethics as Normative Interpretation,” 3 is “Implications for Radical Ethics,” 4 is “Radical Media Ethics,” 5 is “Defining Journalism,” 6 is “Theory of Meaning for Integrated Ethics,” 7 is “Political Values for Integrated Ethics,” 8 is “Aims for Global Integrated Ethics,” and 9 is “Realizing Global Integrated Ethics.”
Many readers—especially those who already are ethics experts and those who are not interested in philosophy behind ethics—will be impatient through Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 6 until its “Application to Media Ethics” section, and Chapter 7 until its “Dialogic Journalism” section because of a lack of references to, let alone applications to, media or criticisms of existing media ethics codes. But the book’s entire contents, even if not always obvious in reading Ward’s proposed global ethics code, form a foundation for a code that is radical in several ways: starting at the root, dramatically different than what readers have seen before, and “advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change” (another Oxford definition of “radical”).
Ward makes at least two factual errors. The Onion was founded in 1988, not “in the 1950s and 1960s” (p. 126). And in the 20th century’s first half, it was not “only [US] newspapers . . . [that] remained unregulated for the most part” (p. 98), but also magazines, books, public relations, and wire services such as Associated Press.
This reader’s only significant criticism is that Ward’s references to citizen journalism (p. 100), description of the Online News Association’s do-it-yourself toolkit (p. 108), discussion of corporate “brand journalism” (p. 112), claim that under traditional objectivity “all forms of opinion journalism were equal” (p. 112), argument that journalism is a social practice (i.e., its ethics are determined by the public of citizens), comment that journalism’s traditionalists are elitist/exclusive, and so on, suggests that Ward’s destination is everyone-is-a-journalist and all-news (even all-communication)-is-journalism. Kovach and Rosenstiel’s The Elements of Journalism demolishes such silliness at book-length, and this reviewer does it elsewhere in a few sentences.
But apparently Ward plays devil’s advocate more than is obvious. By page 135, he writes, There are many acts of communication that are public but are not forms of journalism. If I use Twitter or Facebook to tell my friends that I am attending a conference in New York City, I am informing people about my activities. But I do not commit an act of journalism. This point stands even if social media can be used to do journalism.
(Or, as this reviewer often notes, not all news is journalism [and not all journalism is news].) Ward then adds “timeliness, public significance, and periodic publishing” to his limiting criteria for journalism (p. 136).
This reviewer thinks that Ward overestimates the impact of any one country’s journalism on other countries, and thus, how much that has changed since the Internet. (International news was available pre-Internet.) This reviewer, traveling to three dozen countries in the last 10 years, is consistently struck by how little foreign news is in each country’s media and how little average citizens everywhere know about other countries (also true in the United States). True or not, however, many other reasons exist to pursue this Holy Grail.
The “Ward Code for Global Integrated Ethics” is based on the “promotion of humanity” via journalism and democracy. Media practitioners are called upon to rise above national/parochial interests to “seek common ground in principles of human rights, human flourishing, and global justice” (p. 224). Media are to pursue/promote individual goods, social goods, political goods, and ethical goods as “journalists, citizen creators of content, networks of information sharing, or conveyors of public discussion” (p. 225). Media practitioners should (must?) “act as global agents,” “serve the citizens of the world,” and “promote non-parochial understandings” (pp. 225-226). Global goals are primary, but multiple national approaches exist. Practice norms are “right doing, allowing citizen participation, and being accountable to the public” (p. 227). Media should promote dialog across borders. And media ethics are for everyone. (No argument here.)
Ward believes his proposal’s biggest obstacle is media’s willingness to adopt it. Yes, but there is also a question of media practitioners’ intellectual and psychological capabilities to implement it, given, as only one warning, most U.S. journalists currently practice a brain-dead (non-Lippmann) version of objectivity. Ward grants, “To do this, young journalists need greater social and cultural knowledge with a global perspective” (p. 114). They (and their elders) need more than that.