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Leading parallel lives: journalism and professional ethics

by Ian Richards

Abstract

Although all decisions by journalists have an ethical dimension, lapses in journalistic ethical
standards cannot be explained simply in terms of the moral failings of individuals. Deeper
insight is required, yet for a number of reasons little wider understanding has emerged from
within journalism. At the same time, analysis of journalism ethics is largely absent from the
field of professional ethics. This paper argues that, while this neglect can be understood in
terms of journalism’s uncertain relationship with the notion of professionalism, journalism
justifies far more attention from those who are concerned with professional ethics than has so
far been the case.

Paper submitted for IIPE/AAPAE 2002 Conference Reconstructing `The Public Interest' in a
Globalising World: Business, the Professions and the Public Sector

Dr Ian Richards is Director of the Postgraduate Journalism Program at the University of

South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. A former newspaper journalist, he has worked and
studied in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Contact details:
Dr. Ian Richards
Director
Postgraduate Journalism Program
University of South Australia
St Bernard’s Road
Magill SA 5072

E-mail ian.richards@unisa.edu.au
Phone: (61) – 08 -8302 4526 fax: (61) – 08 - 8302 4745
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Introduction

Journalism is a cut-throat business, the unsavoury practicalities of which do not lend

themselves to academic study. (Blackhurst 1997, p.23)

There is a widely-shared view among journalists that the daily routines of their calling render it
unsuitable for academic study designed to improve journalistic practice. Such assessments are
particularly strongly held when the focus of that study is journalism ethics, even though many
countries, including Australia, have developed journalistic codes of ethics and codes of conduct.
While there is little resistance among journalists in general to the notion that ethics is a legitimate
field of academic study, there is no great support for the notion that the academic study of
journalism ethics has anything useful to contribute to the practice of journalism.

Such views are indefensible for, whether those engaged in journalism realise it or not, all of their
professional decisions have an ethical dimension. This is obvious in, for example, editorial
discussions about whether to publish material which is especially graphic or explicit. However,
an ethical component is also present in the plethora of less dramatic decisions which journalists are
required to make every day – who to interview and who not to interview; who to quote and who not
to quote; what angles to emphasise and which to play down; what to include and what to leave out;
how much to reveal to an interviewee regarding the real purpose of an interview; and so on.

In short, there is an ethical dimension at all stages in the journalistic process, from initial
decisions regarding what to report, through decisions about the gathering and processing of
whatever information is acquired, to decisions as to how the information will be presented and to
whom. Logically, then, whether they realise it or not, journalists do not have any choice between
considering ethics or excluding it from their practice. In other words, journalists can consider
ethics as applied in practice – or they can avoid the issue. If they do the former, they are at the
very least demonstrating the responsibility many claim to be implicit in the notion of
professionalism. Alternatively, if they adopt the latter approach, their practice becomes a matter
of personal responsibility and liability as they position their own judgment as final arbiter.

In Australia, journalists are sharply divided between the minority who belong to the Media
Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), and agree to abide by that organisation’s code of ethics,
and a majority who do not belong to the MEAA and so are not bound to abide by this code. Many
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media organisations have developed their own codes of practice, but these are not necessarily all
consistent or well thought out, and in practice there are difficulties with the content and
application of many of them. The net effect of this situation, combined with a traditional
workplace culture which has emphasised practice over reflection, is that many Australian
journalists give little if any consideration to ethical issues in their daily work. As a result,
approaches to ethical dilemmas are often determined by individual decisions based on such
immediate considerations as what was done last time, what a colleague suggests, what the editor
wants, and what is considered possible ‘to get away with’. Such responses are generally
inconsistent, poorly thought out, idiosyncratic and difficult to defend.

Whether ethical concerns about such practices can be laid entirely at the door of the
individuals directly involved is an important underlying question. It is frequently assumed
that the state of journalism ethics can be largely explained in terms of the moral failings of
individual journalists, editors and proprietors, and certainly it is the case that there are
individuals who prefer an action that is wrong to one that is right, who reject the appropriate
ethical principles in a given situation, and who lack sufficient motivation or concern for the
well-being of others to behave ethically. Such attitudes lead to unethical behaviour and their
existence and potential impact needs to be acknowledged, even though they are often ignored
in general accounts of professional ethics. Martin (2000) contends that individual character
flaws are significant and attributes their down-playing in the wider field of professional
ethics to a ‘host of prejudices’ and an obsession with positivism (p.174). But while his
critique reminds us that individual character accounts for a proportion of unethical behaviour
in journalism, such explanations are not sufficient in themselves.

Deeper understanding is required, and the logical place to begin the search for it is within
journalism itself. Yet such a search is likely to prove unrewarding. Historically, any
movement within journalism towards focusing on ethical issues has been undermined by a
consistent thread of anxiety about the possibility of external regulation, in particular a
concern among many journalists that their participation in robust public discussion of ethical
issues might prove to be ‘the thin end of the wedge’ with regard to such regulation.

This anxiety appears to have been intensified by the very public nature of the activity in which
journalists are engaged. Journalism is one of the most public of professional or quasi-professional
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activities; indeed, there is an old saying in journalism to the effect that: ‘Doctors bury their
mistakes, lawyers jail their mistakes and journalists publish their mistakes for all the world to
see’. One result of this is that journalists often seem to be especially vulnerable to criticism and
correspondingly wary of public discussion about the workings of their calling in general and their
ethics in particular.

Ethical reflection has been further inhibited by the culture in which most journalists work. This
culture has emphasised the immediate and the practical over the reflective and the theoretical and,
in this country at least, been marked by a strong strand of anti-intellectualism. This helps explain
why in Australia:

Anyone who’s worked in a newsroom knows that the Code of Ethics is generally
put up on the wall. There’s a lack of a culture where it’s actually talked about or
discussed. (Elgar 1997)

Underlying all of this is the narrow and intensely practical way in which ethics has been defined
by those journalists who have concerned themselves with the subject. As a result, it is generally
possible for a journalist to adhere closely to the guidelines outlined in one of the journalistic
codes of ethics or of professional practice, yet still produce journalism which at best leaves many
ethical questions unanswered and at worst compromises some key ethical principles.

To take but one example – accuracy in reporting. In Australia, as elsewhere, basic journalism
texts (Hurst and Provis 2000; Oakham 1998; Conley 1997; White 1996; Granato 1991; Jervis
1985, 1988) echo the view that: ‘no journalism can be effective if it is inaccurate’ and that ‘a
single error, however small, can undo everything’ (Conley 1997, p.45). Implicit in such
statements is the view that journalists have an ethical obligation to their audiences and to those
whose activities they report upon to be as accurate as possible, and that failing to be accurate is
‘professionally culpable and…constitutes a moral failure to live up to the responsibilities of one’s
job’ (Kieran 2000, p.157).

Yet in practice a reporter can be scrupulous about reporting accurately what someone has said
and still compromise basic ethical values. This can happen intentionally – for example, if a
reporter chooses to report only those sources whose views reflect his or her own views – but it
can also happen to the reporter who conscientiously follows standard journalistic practice.
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Journalists regularly correct poor grammar and clumsy expression, omit fragmented or
incomplete sentences, and ignore dull remarks in favour of the liveliest quotes. While this is done
to prevent these aspects from distracting or irritating readers and viewers, it can be at the expense
of information which is significant or relevant to those same readers and viewers. Thus, while on
one hand journalists strongly emphasise the need for the greatest degree of accuracy in order to
be faithful to their audience, on the other hand they are quite prepared to compromise that
accuracy in order to maintain audience attention.

Journalism and professional ethics

It’s a journalist’s job to be a witness to history. We’re not there to worry about
ourselves. We’re there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the
truth and get the truth out. (Fisk 1998, p.36)

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going
on knows what he does is morally indefensible. He is a confidence man [sic],
preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying
them without tremor. (Malcolm 1989, p.38)

While not fundamentally inconsistent, such divergent assessments of the ethical core of
journalism by two practitioners of international stature – the first an acclaimed Middle East
correspondent for London’s “The Independent” newspaper, the second a prominent American
journalist and writer – reflect a polarity which is endemic in contemporary journalism. To some
extent such contradictions are found across the spectrum of professional ethics, in part because of
a wider societal confusion over ethical values. MacIntyre (1981) has argued that such confusion
is a product of a range of competing and incompatible philosophical traditions, a situation which
almost inevitably leads to a degree of conflict and, indeed, incoherence in discussions of
professional ethics.

But in journalism the situation is exacerbated because so few philosophers have addressed ‘that
branch of philosophy that helps journalists determine what is right to do in their journalism’ (Itule
and Anderson 2000, p.443). Although the focus of professional ethics is ‘the making of moral
judgements on ethical issues related to the profession, according to professional standards’
(Singer 1990, p.18), journalism ethics has been largely ignored by those who have concerned
themselves with professional ethics. Yet much of the practice of journalism can be described and
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analysed ‘in terms of a set of concepts which are essentially ethical, terms like freedom,
objectivity, truth, honesty, privacy’ (Belsey and Chadwick 1992, p.xi).

While there is a small body of relevant work grounded in applied ethics, even in the wider fields
of communication and media ethics little attention has been devoted to the specific ethical
quandaries of the journalist. By far the greatest contribution to the study of journalism ethics has
come from reflective practitioners and former practitioners, who have generally taken an
intensely practical approach, which helps explain why ‘neither journalists nor philosophers know
how to talk about journalism ethics and, as a result, conversation on the topic is merely evasive
and dispiriting’ (Carey 1987, p.42). The net effect is that Merrill’s observation that ‘when we
enter the area of journalistic ethics, we pass into a swamp of philosophical speculation where
eerie mists of judgement hang low over a boggy terrain’ (Merrill 1974, p.8) remains as valid
today as when he made it almost three decades ago.

Part of the explanation for journalism’s absence from the centre stage of professional ethics is on-
going uncertainty over whether journalism can legitimately be called a profession in the first
place. Traditionally, professionals have been distinguished according to at least five criteria
(Stichler 1992): the possession of specialised knowledge or skills; the acceptance of ethical
standards higher than those expected of other members of society; self-regulation in terms of
entrance to the profession and the monitoring and enforcing of ethical standards; a general
acceptance that those engaged in the activity provide a greater good or benefit for society; and the
enjoyment of certain rights and privileges usually denied to other occupational groups.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether additional criteria are required, and whether some
criteria are more important than others. Thus Allison (1986), for example, argues that positioning
an occupation as indispensable to society is fundamental to its being accepted as a profession:

The occupation is most likely to be successful in its effort if it is conceived to

be a role that is not only a practical necessity for smoothly functioning society,
but one that also is instrumental in guaranteeing life, liberty, or the pursuit of
happiness. (p.15)

A fundamental question in professional ethics is whether being a professional involves different

ethical standards and obligations from those of non-professionals. It has been argued that being a
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member of a profession commits one to ethical obligations which are different from those which
apply to non-professionals. What Gewirth (1986), for example, terms the ‘separatist thesis’ is
supported by such claims as that made by Tur (1996) with regard to lawyers that:

lawyers are not morally accountable for the results of their efforts and cannot be
made accountable without destroying their essential function. Lawyering thus
appears to involve an institutional exemption from the normal dictates of moral
conscience. (p. 87)

Against this view is the position that the ethical obligations of professionals are no different from
those of the rest of society. Koehn, for example, argues that professional ethics is ‘an
institutionalised expression of prevailing public morality’ (Koehn 1994, p.150). If one agrees
with this position then, logically, one must also accept that ‘the autonomy of professional ethics
…is strictly limited’ (Gewirth 1986, p.300).

Determining journalism’s position in relation to this debate is not easy, in part because
conventional models of professions are not necessarily appropriate to journalism. Journalism is
different from such standard professions as medicine or law for a number of reasons and, as a
result, the idea of professionalism in journalism is ‘a vague and contradictory one’ (Meadows
2001a, p.73). Journalists do not need to acquire a systematic body of knowledge in order to
practice, and they do not enjoy anything like the doctor-patient or lawyer-client relationship with
members of the public as represented by either their sources or their audience. While journalists
might respond that their clients are ‘the public’, this concept is ‘not as vividly particular as a
person in trouble: a defendant in the dock, a patient on the operating table, a sinner in moral
confusion’ (Carey 1987, p.46). Accordingly:

The public is not part of the working culture of a journalist. Someone is out there,
undefined, someone who shows up in a letter to the editor, who may even call once
or twice, but is not the vivid, continuous, understandable presence that the client is
to the other professions. (Carey 1987, p.46)

In the face of this ignorance as to who is watching, reading or listening to their reports, most
journalists revert to feedback from their colleagues and managers in the newsroom, whose
opinions are shaped by forces similar to those which have shaped the individual journalist’s own
views. As a result, many journalists feel indifference, ignorance and, indeed, contempt for their
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audience, even though – according to classic press theory and social responsibility theory –
members of the audience should be their prime concern.

Conclusion

Most models of professional ethics are derived from areas such as medicine and the law in which,
at least until very recently, largely independent practitioners served individual clients and any
public benefit accrued as a by-product of the primary one-to-one relationship with the patient or
client. These relationships are not without their difficulties, such as the dependency which is a
hallmark of relationships between doctors, lawyers or social workers and their clients. That
professions often are characterised by such dependency is one of the key reasons why James
Carey (1980), for example, is strongly opposed to the very notion of professionalism in
journalism:

The great danger in modern journalism is one of a professional orientation to an

audience: the belief, usually implicit, that the audience is there to be informed, to be
educated, to be filled with the vital information and knowledge whose nature,
production and control rests with a professional class. This knowledge is defined,
identified, presented, based upon canons of professional expertise over which the
audience exercises no real judgment or control. And in this new client-professional
relationship that emerges, the same structures of dependency are developed that
typify the relations of doctors, lawyers and social workers to their clients. (p.6)

Journalists’ ‘clients’ are largely those who happen to read or view or listen to their work,
although from time to time they are also those individuals upon whose behalf investigative
journalists, for example, take up cudgels. Accordingly, any greater good that journalists claim to
perform on behalf of the public – such as informing the general populace, assisting the
democratic process, acting in the wider interests of the public – accrues to an amorphous and ill-
defined audience rather than a specific ‘client’.

At the same time, it may be that the very notion of professionalism in journalism has negative
ethical consequences. Thus Meadows (2001b), for example, argues that professional ideology in
the media ‘privileges routine structures and practices that tend to frame events within dominant
paradigms’ and that the ideology and notion of professionalism ‘in their present form provide a
sanctuary for those unwilling or unable to examine their key role in shaping reality’ (p.175). In
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support of his case, he points out that in Australia ‘examples of overt and implied racism remain,
despite the Journalists’ Code of Ethics, myriad codes of practice, and complaints procedures of
the Australian Press Council and the Australian Broadcasting Authority’ (p.175). (For fuller
consideration in an Australian context see, for example, Meadows 2001a, 2001b, 1998; Schultz
1998, 1994; Henningham 1990; Bowman 1988; Lloyd 1985).

While it is not the purpose of this paper to resolve the debate over professionalism in journalism,
it is important to acknowledge the consequences for journalism ethics of the protracted debate
engendered by the uncertain nature of the relationship between journalism and professionalism.
Perhaps the most notable of these is that the professional understandings which inform the
deliberations and behaviour of members of many professions are weak or absent from
journalism. Partly because of the conflict between those who insist that journalism is a craft or a
trade, and those who seek to position journalism as a profession, journalists have frequently failed
to respond to ethical discussion in ways which conventional professionals would regard as
standard (Carey 1987). This debate has also distracted attention from the ‘on the ground’
unethical conduct of journalists even though the ethical basis of journalism is of far more
significance than whether journalists call themselves professionals or not.

What is important is not a precise definition of a profession, which is bound to be

too restricted to apply to the variety of groups that have some fair claim to be
professional these days, but rather the quality of the conduct of members of these
groups, whether it be in medicine or journalism, so long as it has a potential for
good or harm. (Belsey and Chadwick, p.12)

More seriously, at least in terms of the argument being mounted here, the debate over the
relationship between journalism and professsionalism has contributed to journalism’s relegation
to a peripheral position in the field of professional ethics. This is unfortunate because it seems
clear that, regardless of how well it might or might not fit standard interpretations of
professionalism and regardless of the possible risks inherent in viewing it through the lens of
“the professions”, journalism would benefit from the understandings which have informed other
areas of professional ethics. So, too, would the wider society. After all, not only is the ethical
dimension of fundamental importance to the moral legitimacy of journalism, but journalists and
journalism continue to be of fundamental importance to contemporary life:
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At the level of the city, state or nation the best of the news media is able to explain
us to ourselves, highlight our shortcomings and provide the insights that enable new
solutions to emerge. (Schultz 1998, p.7)

Quite simply, for all the flaws of journalism, ‘no one has come up with a better arrangement’
(Carey 1997, p.250). As such, journalism warrants far more serious ethical analysis than it has so
far received.

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