Ethics of journalism topic of lecture Thursday night

By Jason Koole
Western Herald

Stephen Ward, Ph.D. addressed the role of a free and democratic press Thursday night in Brown Hall. Co-sponsored by Western Michigan University’s Center for the Study of Ethics and chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, “A Free and Undemocratic Media” described the role that journalism plays in society, and how a new guideline of journalism ethics may be in order.

Ward, the director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, asserted that the future of democracy requires a core of journalists reporting on multiple platforms and that journalism should go beyond its freedom to publish. Ward then went on to talk about the current role that journalism ethics play in the differing forms of media. Ward also addressed the decline of ethics in journalism.

“We are so used to the phrase ‘a free and democratic press’ that we think the two notions are sometimes inseparable when we forget our history,” Ward said. “The link between a free press and a democratic press was constructed.”

Ward discussed the history of journalism, and how the role of the journalist has evolved. He also talked about how the newspaper was an event and something that everyone read and needed in society and then contrasted that idea to today’s society, where seemingly no one reads newspapers anymore.

As the session went on, Ward brought up how journalism ethics first came about.

“Ethics [were] needed because a free marketplace of ideas was not enough,” Ward said. “The world needed journalists to adhere to ethical principals and yet they should discipline their reporting with a then rising doctrine of objectivity.”

According to Ward, ethics grew and evolved in professional associations bringing up the basic code of ethics that journalists are supposed to use today like professionalism, independence, truth telling, and objectivity. Ethics was originally a self-employed discipline on journalism.

Ward said that ethics is needed because journalists can do substantial harm or good to society, and that there is a long list of negative things journalists can do, such as destroy reputations, deal rumors, demonize minorities, plagiarize and fabricate stories, doctor images, and intrude in private lives.

“There is also the positive side of journalism,” Ward said, “which is often forgotten in that long list of complaints, which is to try to contribute to the public good.”

One of the more important ideas Ward addressed was that journalism needs public reason, something that goes beyond personal goals, and that the journalist’s role is to promote public reason, provide objectivity and become informed of what goes on beneath society.

“Journalist promote public reason when they fulfill two crucial functions of democratic media, an informative and deliberate function,” Ward said, “[in] my view, journalists have a duty to improve the informative and deliberate [the] health of citizens, as public health officers are responsible for the physical health of citizens.”

According to Ward, journalists need to adopt pragmatic objectivity and that journalist need to be disinterested.

“Disinterested does not mean ‘I don’t care’,” Ward said. “I am disinterested if I do not let my prejudices, my bias prejudice the way I approach my stories from the start, and I don’t force facts to fit a very convenient and sexy story.”

Ward pointed out that talk shows and television programs do this and that to be successful in fulfilling their role, journalists need to be ready to listen and talk. Other parts of Ward’s model are that journalism needs to cover politics and delve deep in the government, and that journalism needs to promote justice as well as the idea that people can say whatever they want.

“Journalism is more than an exercise in free speech, in my view; it is an exercise of democratic speech, of just, respectful, and equal speech,” Ward said. “I support the legal right for robust free speech, but a country whose public discourse is predominantly intolerant, and ideological, is heading for serious trouble.”

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Oct 30 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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