Journalism and media studies lack robust theoretical concepts for studying journalistic knowledge ‎generation. More specifically, conceptual challenges attend the emergence of big data and ‎algorithmic sources of journalistic knowledge. A family of frameworks apt to this challenge is ‎provided by “social epistemology”: a young philosophical field which regards society’s participation ‎in knowledge generation as inevitable. Social epistemology offers the best of both worlds for ‎journalists and media scholars: a thorough familiarity with biases and failures of obtaining ‎knowledge, and a (...) strong orientation toward best practices in the realm of knowledge-acquisition ‎and truth-seeking. This paper articulates the lessons of social epistemology for two central nodes of ‎knowledge-acquisition in contemporary journalism: human-mediated knowledge and technology-‎mediated knowledge. ‎. (shrink)

"Using hundreds of examples from newsrooms large and small, author Ron F. Smith challenges readers to determine how they would face moral dilemmas on the job. Chapters evaluate the search for principles, accountability, truth and objectivity, errors and corrections, diversity, "faking" the news, reporters and their sources, privacy, the government watch, deception, compassion, the business of news, journalists and their communities, and financial concerns. New to this edition: a chapter on improving coverage of minorities, expanded discussion of broadcast journalism (...) and reporting on the Internet, and stories from recent front pages and TV news programs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

According to the informational model, journalism’s primary function is to provide the public with information and help it acquire knowledge and understanding. Opinion journalism appears to conflict with this model. Although it constitutes a major part of the news media, its role remains poorly defined, and many view it with suspicion. This article argues that opinion journalism serves an important epistemic function that is integral to the informational model: to facilitate appropriate uncertainty by helping audiences form epistemically (...) valuable attitudes toward unsettled questions of public importance. I examine the multiple societal roles of opinion journalism—including policy advising and facilitating public deliberation—and highlight tensions that can arise in practice between these roles and the role of facilitating appropriate uncertainty. Finally, I suggest that greater transparency about both the epistemic status of the claims discussed in opinion pieces and the purpose of opinion journalism may mitigate these tensions. (shrink)

The author defines and analyzes a practice central to inquiry: treating things as relevant to questions. This notion helps illuminate what lines of inquiry are, how those lines unfold, and how to evaluate them. When applied to the context of news journalism, we can use the notion of lines of inquiry to understand how questions get built into frames that give shape to news stories. Armed with this concept, we can then better understand the roles of lines of inquiry (...) in journalism, and see more clearly how to evaluate news stories not just by fact-checking, but also by considering which facts should be selected to build a story to begin with. (shrink)

In this article, I address some central issues in journalism ethics from a fresh perspective, namely, one that is theoretical and informed by values salient in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a foundational moral theory with an African pedigree, which is intended to rival Western theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism, I provide a unified account of an array of duties of various agents with respect to the news/opinion media. I maintain that the ability of the African moral theory to (...) plausibly account for issues such as proper content, investigative ethics, and freedom of speech means that it should be taken seriously by media ethicists and merits being paired up against competing approaches in future work. (shrink)

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in journalism has transformed news production, content distribution, and ethical responsibilities. This study offers a systematic bibliometric analysis to map the structure, trends, and thematic focus of scholarly output on AI ethics in journalism. Based on 71 publications indexed in SSCI, AHCI, and ESCI and selected through PRISMA-guided criteria from the Web of Science, the study reveals a significant rise in ethical debates over the past five years. Citation analyses highlight (...) key themes such as ethical norms, algorithmic journalism, and AI-assisted content creation, while emerging trends include transparency, accountability, and the role of social media. The findings indicate the formation of an interdisciplinary and evolving research field that addresses the ethical, professional, and societal implications of AI in journalism. As academic interest grows, the literature is expected to expand further, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of AI’s impact on journalistic practices. (shrink)

This paper examines mediators’ epistemic obligations during expert interviews. Drawing on science communication, journalism ethics, and social epistemology, I argue that mediators have an epistemic duty to ask good questions of experts. After outlining how expert testimony can harm audiences epistemically and providing a normative framework for mediators’ duty to inform, I examine three strategies to discharge this duty. The credentials monitoring approach, which limits mediators’ role in verifying experts’ qualifications and competence, fails to prevent harmful testimony from genuine (...) experts. The interference approach, which requires mediators to challenge expert claims directly, imposes unrealistically high epistemic standards on mediators and risks counterproductive non-peer disagreements. I propose an alternative: the good questioning approach. By asking expanding and contesting questions that prompt experts to justify claims and make evidence accessible, mediators can fulfill their epistemic duty without needing domain-specific expertise. This framework enhances our understanding of distributed epistemic responsibility in public scientific discourse and offers practical guidance for improving journalistic practice in expert interviews. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers nowadays also write histories of their discipline, or some do, but do they do this as one might expect? Much as they sit around discussing some paradox, which they think involves a false conclusion but has premises we find attractive, so you might expect them to start with a mythical history and then explain what is wrong with it. Do they do this? I am not convinced they do. In this paper, I introduce a mythical history of analytic (...) philosophy and journalism relations, in which this happened: era 1, analytic philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from journalists by having short papers requiring LITTLE RESEARCH, which presented clever responses to clever puzzles; era 2, analytic philosophers decided that certain topics could safely be treated more journalistically, because the newspapers do not cover such abstract topics. The paper is written as an imitation of modernist poet, essayist, and fiction writer Laura Riding. I use discussion of the is-ought gap to illustrate my mythical history, but end up unfortunately devaluing Professor Charles Pigden. (shrink)

Does objectivity exist in the news media? In The Invention of Journalism Ethics, Stephen Ward argues that given the current emphasis on interpretation, analysis, and perspective, journalists and the public need a new theory of objectivity. He explores the varied ethical assertions of journalists over the past few centuries, focusing on the changing relationship between journalist and audience. This historical analysis leads to an innovative theory of pragmatic objectivity that enables journalists and the public to recognize and avoid biased (...) and unbalanced reporting. Ward convincingly demonstrates that journalistic objectivity is not a set of absolute standards but the same fallible but reasonable objectivity used for making decisions in other professions and public institutions. Considered a classic in the field since its first publication in 2004, this second edition includes new chapters that bring the book up to speed with journalism ethics in the twenty-first century by focusing on the growing dominance of online journalism and calling for a radical approach to journalism ethics reform. Ward also addresses important developments that have occurred in the last decade, including the emergence of digital journalism ethics and global journalism ethics. (shrink)

This article proposes 3 principles and 3 imperatives as the philosophical foundations of a global journalism ethics. The central claim is that the globalization of news media requires a radical rethinking of the principles and standards of journalism ethics, through the adoption of a cosmopolitan attitude. The article explains how and why ethicists should construct a global journalism ethics, using a contractualist approach. It then formulates 3 "claims" or principles: the claims of credibility, justifiable consequence, and humanity. (...) The claim of humanity is developed further by the formulation of 3 imperatives: to act as a global agent, to serve world citizens, and to enhance nonparochial understandings. The article concludes by considering some implications of a cosmopolitan attitude for the practice of journalism. (shrink)

A series of international controversies involving religious offense have manifested the clash of values between freedom of expression and respect for religious identity. Such conflicts pose an ethical dilemma for media. Journalists need to assert freedom of expression, but they should also understand how hate speech can be used to repress targeted groups, and not turn into unwitting facilitators of such campaigns. They should also appreciate that the taking of offense, and not just the giving of it, can be engineered (...) by leaders of religious communities to secure a political advantage. Journalists appear underprepared for handling such events. While not attempting a revision of current codes of ethics, this paper draws on legal discourse to suggest a framework and a language through which journalists can deliberate their ethics to respond to an urgent global challenge. (shrink)

In these essays, we are concerned with virtue in journalism and the media but are mindful of the tension between the commercial foundations of publishing and broadcasting, on the one hand, and journalism's democratic obligations on the other. Adam outlines, first, a moral vision of journalism focusing on individualistic concepts of authorship and craft. Next, Craft attempts to bridge individual and organizational concerns by examining the obligations of organizations to the individuals working within them. Finally, Cohen discusses (...) the importance of resisting the powerful corporate logic that pervades the news media in the United States and calls on journalists to be courageous. (shrink)

Publisistika özünü ən müxtəlif sahələrində göstərir. Bu, onun imkanları və funksiyaları ilə bağlıdır. Belə ki, publisistika ictimai rəy yaratmaqla yanaşı, həm də cəmiyyətin inkişafına bu və ya digər formada istiqamət verir. Bu baxımdan publisistika əslində hər yerdə var. Siyasət sahəsində də publisistikadan geniş istifadə olunur. Bu, özünü müxtəlif formalarda göstərir. Ümumi mənada isə siyasi publisistikanın əsas məqsədi siyasəti, o cümlədən baş verməkdə olan geosiyasi prosesləri ifadə etməkdir. Bunun üçün publisistikanın müxtəlif janr və formatlarından geniş istifadə olunur. Elmi məqalədə siyasi publisistikanın (...) aktuallığından və onun səciyyəvi xüsusiyyətlərindən geniş söz açılıb. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of virtuous journalism as demonstrated in the award-winning movie Spotlight. It analyzes Spotlight using key concepts from virtue ethics theory – arête, p...

In his comment to my article ‘Private Media, Public Funds, and Democratic Allocation’, Fox raised two pressing challenges. The first challenge is theoretical and claims that the deliberative view of journalism I endorse, which assumes as its only function the promotion of deliberation, is too narrow to incorporate all that makes journalism valuable. The second challenge, which naturally follows from the first one, is institutional: such a narrow view of journalism leads to inadequate eligibility criteria, as these (...) criteria will trace back only the institutional features that predispose media organizations to promote deliberation. In this reply, I defend my view of journalism against these two challenges. (shrink)

Although the individual journalist is an essential unit of ethical agency, journalists are increasingly employees of large companies or corporations whose primary aim is to maximize returns to shareholders. Consequently, many, perhaps most, of the ethical dilemmas journalists face begin with the inherent conflict between the individual's role as a journalist and his or her employer's quest for profit. My underlying argument in this article is that this situation is not unique, that other fields are confronting similar dilemmas, and consequently, (...) journalism may have much to learn from them. In the article I contend that business and journalism ethics, in particular, appear to have more in common than has generally been acknowledged and that the field of business ethics has yielded many concepts that appear to have relevance to journalism. In the article, I conclude that considering the insights offered by those who operate from the perspective of business ethics will facilitate analysis of the interface between individual journalists and the corporate forces that affect so many of them. (shrink)

With the emergence of generative AI, news outlets have been experimenting with different ways to incorporate them into journalism practices, from newsgathering to producing automated content, and optimizing distribution. How can we ensure news outlets are adopting AI technologies in an ethical way? This study examines guidelines on the use of AI published by 14 news outlets in the United States. Common ethical values such as transparency, fairness, and accountability are found in both AI and journalism ethics and (...) frame our comparative analysis. We argue that most of these AI standards are vague and abstract, lacking a practical approach with examples illustrating problematic uses of GenAI in journalism. Reflecting upon the lack of regulation, this study proposes a risk management framework with concrete examples and recommendations to mitigate potential harms associated with the use of generative AI in journalism. (shrink)

The landscape in which journalists now work is substantially different to that of the twentieth century. The rise of digital and social media necessitates a new way of considering the ethical questions facing practicing journalists. This volume considers the various individual, cultural and institutional influences that have an impact on journalistic ethics today. It also examines the links between ethics and professionalism, the organizational promotion of ethical values and the tensions between ethics, freedom of information and speech, and the need (...) to disseminate information. By comparing the theoretical underpinnings of journalistic ethics with a variety of international case studies, this volume provides a comparative global analysis of the ethical challenges faced by the media in the twenty-first century. It will be essential reading for students of journalism and practicing journalists. (shrink)

The last decades have seen a resurgence of ethicists in public discourse. In the news media, they are called upon to comment on current affairs and public policy. I argue that the epistemic status of their testimony and the scope of their expertise are not always clear to media consumers. Ethicists have a very distinct and limited kind of expertise and the main goal of expert ethics communication should be the fostering of moral understanding and ethics literacy. This goal, however, (...) is in conflict with some of the goals of journalism that are grounded in the rationale of the media market. While good ethics communication thrives on caution, nuance and pointing out consensus, the media market has a tendency to prefer definitive answers and controversy. In this paper, I am spelling out specific conflicts that arise in various steps of the journalistic process and make proposals for how to solve those conflicts. Some, I argue, can be fixed easily, some less so. Help might come from science media centres as a place where ethical and journalistic expertise can occur together. (shrink)

This book teaches students how to make the difficult ethical decisions that journalists routinely face.

One way to be a thoughtful consumer of the news is to pay attention to the quality of the news sources you watch, listen to, and read. Good journalists follow a code of ethics when preparing and delivering news reports. Through age-appropriate language and real-life examples, this intriguing book tells young readers more about that code, why it exists, and how it's changed over the years. They'll also learn how to tell if new sources they follow adhere to it through (...) practical examples and useful fact boxes."--Amazon.com. (shrink)