By Jack Breslin, Iona College | Media Ethics
In reflecting on our first decade as an AEJMC division, the Media Ethics Division leadership must continue to attract and inspire members with an open and engaging dialogue about crucial media ethics issues.
This on-going dialogue should not only promote relevant and innovative scholarship, which MED’s panels, research sessions and publications have demonstrated over the past decade. But this ethical “marketplace of ideas” must also inspire students and professionals to create their own ethical identities to discover insights and solutions for existing and new ethical challenges in our global media environment.
From AEJMC’s early days, individual scholars pursued media ethics research as various disciplines sponsored panels and attracted research papers on the topic. There was talk of a full-fledged division, but no official movement developed, even as events in journalism focused on ethics in the profession and college courses in media ethics increased. The founding of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics in 1984 and “boot camp” teaching workshops by Ed Lambeth (Missouri) also focused more attention on the discipline.
AJEMC’s Standing Committee on Professional Freedom and Responsibility formed an “Ad Hoc Committee on Ethics,” chaired by Cliff Christians (Illinois) in 1982. Yet the idea of a separate media ethics division still met opposition from those who insisted the topic got enough attention among existing groups.
In 1997, Bill Babcock (Southern Illinois, Carbondale) and Michelle Johnson organized a group of media ethics veterans into an effort that gained Interest Group approval at the Baltimore 1998 convention, followed by division status in New Orleans the next year.
From that handful of scholars, MED has flourished with 291 current members who come from all AEJMC’s divisions, interest groups and commissions. In addition to attracting a growing number of research papers submissions, MED has become a sought-after division for panel co-sponsorship, as the various disciplines recognize the need and value of media ethics in scholarship, teaching and the professions.
To sustain that growth and relevancy among mass communication disciplines, MED faces several significant challenges. In countering the “common sense” approach to ethical decision making, our scholarship must encourage application of the philosophy and theory of ethics. Mere moralizing or ad-hoc “best practice” codes will not provide consistent, workable or theory-grounded ethical solutions.
Interdisciplinary research and dialogue also offer theory and applications outside mass communication. MED has consistently met this challenge with its longtime relationship with the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, which promotes interdisciplinary study and teaching of ethics in such diverse areas as business, social services, medicine, law, and media.
With many media institutions and individuals focused on survival, how can MED convince current and future practitioners about the value of ethics? By expanding its ethical scholarship and teaching within traditional mass media professions, such as advertising, public relations, broadcasting, film and journalism, MED must address the global media environment and “new” ethical issues, particularly intercultural clashes, created by the Digital Revolution.