What are the Factors that go into Media Ethics?
Ethics in media is very important as well as very tricky to describe as the aspects of it can vary in different situations. "Media ethics promotes and defends values such as universal respect for life and the rule of law and legality; media ethics defines and deals with ethical questions about how media should use texts and pictures provided by the citizens." Overall the final decision going into these decisions in the media is based on ethical and professional codes. Common things that get confused as ethics are feelings, religion, and law. Usually, the number one thing that is considered when looking to produce media is, "is what I am producing going to harm or hurt individuals or groups?" One common ethical approach to media ethics is the "Utilitarian Approach," which takes both sides of what you are looking to produce and highlights the wrongs and rights and their respected outcomes, which relates to the previous statement above. The Utilitarian approach was made well-known by Jeremy Bentham & John Stuart Mill. It consists of three basic principles pleasure or happiness, actions of wrong or right, and collective equality. Another ethical approach to ethics is the "Common Good Approach," which "...refers to actions that are taken or policies put into place to benefit not only a certain group of individuals but also society as a whole." This approach to media ethics goes way back, taking ideas from Plato and Aristotle, and other popular philosophers at the time.
As you can see from the two media ethics approaches, they are both very similar in that they want to take the better good of the options presented not for the individual but society as a whole. These are only the surface level as ethics, as many other factors and approaches are used in everyday media. Next time you look at controversial media, try to apply these ethics and see what you would do differently.
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