Mass media ethics case studies

iMedia Ethics

Issues and Cases

Ninth Edition

Philip Patterson Oklahoma Christian University

Lee Wilkins Wayne State University

University of Missouri

Chad Painter University of Dayton

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

2

iiExecutive Editor: Elizabeth Swayze Assistant Editor: Megan Manzano Senior Marketing Manager: Kim Lyons

Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate page within the text.

Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging - in - Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-5381-1258-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5381-1259-5 (ebook)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

3

https://www.rowman.com

iii For Linda, David, and Laurel

4

ivBrief Contents

Foreword Preface

1 An Introduction to Ethical Decision-Making 2 Information Ethics: A Profession Seeks the Truth 3 Strategic Communication: Does Client Advocate Mean Consumer Adversary? 4 Loyalty: Choosing Between Competing Allegiances 5 Privacy: Looking for Solitude in the Global Village 6 Mass Media in a Democratic Society: Keeping a Promise 7 Media Economics: The Deadline Meets the Bottom Line 8 Picture This: The Ethics of Photo and Video Journalism 9 Informing a Just Society

v 10 The Ethical Dimensions of Art and Entertainment 11 Becoming a Moral Adult References Index

5

viContents

Foreword Preface

1 An Introduction to Ethical Decision-Making Essay: Cases and moral systems

Deni Elliott Case 1-A: How to read a case study

Philip Patterson

2 Information Ethics: A Profession Seeks the Truth Case 2-A: Anonymous or confidential: Unnamed sources in the news

Lee Wilkins Case 2-B: Death as content: Social responsibility and the documentary filmmaker

Tanner Hawkins Case 2-C: News and the transparency standard

Lee Wilkins Case 2-D: Can I quote me on that?

Chad Painter Case 2-E: NPR, the New York Times, and working conditions in China

Lee Wilkins vii Case 2-F: When is objective reporting irresponsible reporting?

Theodore L.Glasser Case 2-G: Is it news yet?

Michelle Peltier Case 2-H: What’s yours is mine: The ethics of news aggregation

Chad Painter

3 Strategic Communication: Does Client Advocate Mean Consumer Adversary? Case 3-A: Weedvertising

Lee Wilkins Case 3-B: Cleaning up their act: The Chipotle food safety crisis

Kayla McLaughlin and Kelly Vibber Case 3-C: Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ prescription drug choices

Tara Walker Case 3-D: Between a (Kid) Rock and a hard place

Molly Shor Case 3-E: Was that an Apple computer I saw? Product placement in the United States and abroad

Philip Patterson Case 3-F: Sponsorships, sins, and PR: What are the boundaries?

Lauren Bacon Brengarth Case 3-G: A charity drops the ball

Philip Patterson

4 Loyalty: Choosing Between Competing Allegiances Case 4-A: Fair or foul? Reporter/player relationships in the sports beat

Lauren A. Waugh Case 4-B: To watch or to report: What journalists were thinking in the midst of disaster

Lee Wilkins Case 4-C: Public/on-air journalist vs. private/online life: Can it work?

6

Madison Hagood Case 4-D: When you are the story: Sexual harassment in the newsroom

Lee Wilkins Case 4-E: Whose Facebook page is it anyway?

Amy Simons viii Case 4-F: Where everybody knows your name: Reporting and relationships in a small market

Ginny Whitehouse Case 4-G: Quit, blow the whistle, or go with the flow?

Robert D. Wakefield Case 4-H: How one tweet ruined a life

Philip Patterson

5 Privacy: Looking for Solitude in the Global Village Case 5-A: Drones and the news

Kathleen Bartzen Culver Case 5-B: Concussion bounty: Is trust ever worth violating?

Lee Wilkins Case 5-C: Joe Mixon: How do we report on domestic violence in sports?

Brett Deever Case 5-D: Looking for Richard Simmons

Lee Wilkins Case 5-E: Children and framing: The use of children’s images in an anti-same-sex marriage ad

Yang Liu Case 5-F: Mayor Jim West’s computer

Ginny Whitehouse Case 5-G: Politics and money: What’s private and what’s not

Lee Wilkins

6 Mass Media in a Democratic Society: Keeping a Promise Case 6-A: Reporting on rumors: When should a news organization debunk?

Lee Wilkins Case 6-B: Doxxer, Doxxer, give me the news?

Mark Anthony Poepsel Case 6-C: The truth about the facts: Politifact.com

Lee Wilkins Case 6-D: WikiLeaks

Lee Wilkins Case 6-E: Control Room: Do culture and history matter in reporting the news?

Lee Wilkins ix Case 6-F: Victims and the press

Robert Logan Case 6-G: For God and Country: The media and national security

Jeremy Littau and Mark Slagle

7 Media Economics: The Deadline Meets the Bottom Line Case 7-A: Murdoch’s mess

Lee Wilkins Case 7-B: Who controls the local news? Sinclair Broadcasting Group and “must-runs”

Keena Neal Case 7-C: Automated journalism: The rise of robot reporters

Chad Painter Case 7-D: Contested interests, contested terrain: The New York Times Code of Ethics

Lee Wilkins and Bonnie Brennen Case 7-E: Transparency in fundraising: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting standard

Lee Wilkins Case 7-F: News now, facts later

Lee Wilkins

7

Case 7-G: Crossing the line? The LA Times and the Staples affair Philip Patterson and Meredith Bradford

8 Picture This: The Ethics of Photo and Video Journalism Case 8-A: Killing a journalist on-air: A means/ends test

Mitchel Allen Case 8-B: Remember my fame: Digital necromancy and the immortal celebrity

Samantha Most Case 8-C: Problem photos and public outcry

Jon Roosenraad Case 8-D: Above the fold: Balancing newsworthy photos with community standards

Jim Godbold and Janelle Hartman Case 8-E: Horror in Soweto

Sue O’Brien Case 8-F: Photographing funerals of fallen soldiers

Philip Patterson

x 9 Informing a Just Society Case 9-A: Spotlight: It takes a village to abuse a child

Lee Wilkins Case 9-B: 12th and Clairmount: A newspaper’s foray into documenting a pivotal summer

Lee Wilkins Case 9-C: Cincinnati Enquirer’s heroin beat

Chad Painter Case 9-D: Feminist fault lines: Political memoirs and Hillary Clinton

Miranda Atkinson Case 9-E: GoldieBlox: Building a future on theft

Scott Burgess

10 The Ethical Dimensions of Art and Entertainment Case 10-A: Get Out: When the horror is race

Michael Fuhlhage and Lee Wilkins Case 10-B: To die for: Making terrorists of gamers in Modern Warfare 2

Philip Patterson Case 10-C: Daily dose of civic discourse

Chad Painter Case 10-D: The Onion: Finding humor in mass shootings

Chad Painter Case 10-E: Hate radio: The outer limits of tasteful broadcasting

Brian Simmons Case 10-F: Searching for Sugar Man: Rediscovered art

Lee Wilkins

11 Becoming a Moral Adult References

Index

8

xi

9

Foreword Clifford G. Christians

Research Professor of Communication, University of Illinois–Urbana

The playful wit and sharp mind of Socrates attracted disciples from all across ancient Greece. They came to learn and debate in what could be translated as “his thinkery.” By shifting the disputes among Athenians over earth, air, fire, and water to human virtue, Socrates gave Western philosophy and ethics a new intellectual center (Cassier 1944).

But sometimes his relentless arguments would go nowhere. On one occasion, he sparred with the philosopher Hippias about the difference between truth and falsehood. Hippias was worn into submission but retorted at the end, “I cannot agree with you, Socrates.” And then the master concluded: “Nor I with myself, Hippias. . . . I go astray, up and down, and never hold the same opinion.” Socrates admitted to being so clever that he had befuddled himself. No wonder he was a favorite target of the comic poets. I. F. Stone likens this wizardry to “whales of the intellect flailing about in deep seas” (Stone 1988).

With his young friend Meno, Socrates argued whether virtue is teachable. Meno was eager to learn more, after “holding forth often on the subject in front of large audiences.” But he complained, “You are exercising magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me under your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness. . . . You are exactly like the flat stingray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb.”

Philosophy is not a semantic game, though sometimes its idiosyncrasies feed that response into the popular mind. Media Ethics: Issues and Cases does not debunk philosophy as the excess of sovereign reason. The authors of this book will not encourage those who ridicule philosophy as cunning xiirhetoric. The issue at stake here is actually a somewhat different problem—the Cartesian model of philosophizing.

The founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes, preferred to work in solitude. Paris was whirling in the early 17th century, but for two years even Descartes’s friends could not find him as he squirreled himself away studying mathematics. One can even guess the motto above his desk: “Happy is he who lives in seclusion.” Imagine the conditions under which he wrote “Meditations II.” The Thirty Years’ War in Europe brought social chaos everywhere. The Spanish were ravaging the French provinces and even threatening Paris, but Descartes was shut away in an apartment in Holland. Tranquility for philosophical speculation mattered so much to him that upon hearing Galileo had been condemned by the Church, he retracted parallel arguments of his own on natural science. Pure philosophy as an abstract enterprise needed a cool atmosphere isolated from everyday events.

Descartes’s magnificent formulations have always had their detractors, of course. David Hume did not think of philosophy in those terms, believing as he did that sentiment is the foundation of morality. For Søren Kierkegaard, an abstract system of ethics is only paper currency with nothing to back it up. Karl Marx insisted that we change the world and not merely explain it. But no one drew the modern philosophical map more decisively than Descartes, and his mode of rigid inquiry has generally defined the field’s parameters.

This book adopts the historical perspective suggested by Stephen Toulmin: The philosophy whose legitimacy the critics challenge is always the seventeenth century tradition founded primarily upon René Descartes. . . . [The] arguments are directed to one particular style of philosophizing—a theory-centered style which poses philosophical problems, and frames solutions to them, in timeless and universal terms. From 1650, this particular style was taken as defining the very agenda of philosophy (1988, 338).

The 17th-century philosophers set aside the particular, the timely, the local, and the oral. And that development left untouched nearly half of the philosophical agenda. Indeed, it is those neglected topics—what I here call “practical philosophy”—that are showing fresh signs of life today, at the very time when the more familiar “theory-centered” half of the subject is languishing (Toulmin 1988, 338).

This book collaborates in demolishing the barrier of three centuries between pure and applied philosophy; it joins in reentering practical concerns as the legitimate domain of philosophy itself. For Toulmin, the primary focus of ethics has moved from the study to the bedside to criminal courts, engineering labs, the newsroom, factories, and ethnic street corners. Moral philosophers are not being asked to hand over their duties to

10

technical experts xiii in today’s institutions but rather to fashion their agendas within the conditions of contemporary struggle.

All humans have a theoretical capacity. Critical thinking, the reflective dimension, is our common property. And this book nurtures that reflection in communication classrooms and by extension into centers of media practice. If the mind is like a muscle, this volume provides a regimen of exercises for strengthening its powers of systematic reflection and moral discernment. It does not permit those aimless arguments that result in quandary ethics. Instead, it operates in the finest traditions of practical philosophy, anchoring the debates in real-life conundrums but pushing the discussion toward substantive issues and integrating appropriate theory into the decision-making process. It seeks to empower students to do ethics themselves, under the old adage that teaching someone to fish lasts a lifetime, and providing fish only saves the day.

Media Ethics: Issues and Cases arrives on the scene at a strategic time in higher education. Since the late 19th century, ethical questions have been taken from the curriculum as a whole and from the philosophy department. Recovering practical philosophy has involved a revolution during the last decade in which courses in professional ethics have reappeared throughout the curriculum. This book advocates the pervasive method and carries the discussions even further, beyond freestanding courses into communication classrooms across the board.

In this sense, the book represents a constructive response to the current debates over the mission of higher education. Professional ethics has long been saddled with the dilemma that the university was given responsibility for professional training precisely at the point in its history that it turned away from values to scientific naturalism. Today one sees it as a vast horizontal plain given to technical excellence but barren in enabling students to articulate a philosophy of life. As the late James Carey concluded,

Higher education has not been performing well of late and, like most American institutions, is suffering from a confusion of purpose, an excess of ambition that borders on hubris, and an appetite for money that is truly alarming (1989, 48).

The broadside critiques leveled in Thorstein Veblen’s The Higher Learning in America (1918) and Upton Sinclair’s The Goose Step (1922) are now too blatantly obvious to ignore. But Media Ethics: Issues and Cases does not merely demand a better general education or a recommitment to values; it strengthens the communications curriculum by equipping thoughtful students with a more enlightened moral awareness. Since Confucius, we have understood that lighting a candle is better than cursing the darkness, or, in Mother Teresa’s version, we feed the world one mouth at a time.