Media Ethics Midterm

The Heinz Dilemma

Do you steal the magic drug to cure your dying wife?

What are Ethics?

The Basic Principles of Right Action, The Study of Human Conduct focusing on Right and Wrong, A reflection of society’s notion about the rightness and wrongness of an act

Ethics are determined by

societies, groups, and institutions

Ethics are not

Universal

Ethics can be legally binding if

you’re a doctor or a lawyer (and other times)

If we let everyone determine their own moral standards

we’d probably have anarchy

Practicing Ethics

means resolving a conflict in a way that satisfies you and attempts to be fair to those affected by your decision

Deontology

Duty-Based

Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative

An ethical person should never do anything that they would not want to see applied as a universal standard behavior

Deontology

Follow standards of good behavior because they're good, regardless of consequence

Deontology

Tell the truth (unless super good reason not to)

Teleology

Emphasizes the consequences of one’s actions

Utilitarianism

The best ethical decision is that which produces the greatest good for the greatest number (The Happiness Theory) (Teleological)

John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle

The only good reason to prevent someone from doing what they want is to prevent harm to other people. (Teleological)

Relativism

The moral thing depends on your point of view (Teleological)

John Dewey

Ethics change over time. Different cultures have different perspectives. don’t judge. (Teleological)

Egalitarianism

All individuals deserve equal treatment. Minorities and minority viewpoints should be given the same consideration as the majority (Teleological)

Trolley Problem IRL

Self driving cars

Virtue Ethics in journalism

The balance between telling the truth and minimizing harm

Aristotle’s Golden Mean

Virtue, in most cases, is somewhere in between extremes (Virtue Ethics)

Judeo-Christian Ethics

Similar to the Golden Rule (Virtue Ethics) treat others how you want to be treated

YouTube using AI to edit people’s videos

Changing people’s faces and smoothing things out, very noticable in ears

Samsung enhancing moon photos

Creating a generated moon when you thought you were taking a picture of the moon

Kobe Bryant’s grape Case (Knowt won’t let me use profanity)

He assaulted a young hotel worker while married and earlish in his career, Nike contract suspended for only two years

Kobe Follow Up Tweet

After Kobe’s untimely death, Washington post reporter Felicia Somnez tweeted out a link to an article about Kobe’s SA case only hours afterwards. The post put her on paid administrative leave and eventually decided it didn’t break guidelines

Sophists

Ancient philosophers that would accept money to teach people how to be good at arguing. Socrates hated them.

Titans take away Jared Stillman’s Credential without explaining why

Jackass reporter Jared Stillman always heckled the Titans and they took his credential away for no real reason. Bad form.

Critical Thinking

Goes beyond your personal opinions as they apply to the dilemma at hand, focuses on the reasons for your ethical judgements, a process of asking questions

SAD Method

1. Define the Situation

2. Analysis of the situation in respect to one or more moral theories

3. Final Decision

Defining the situation

What are the ethical issues? What are the facts? what are the principles and values?

Analyzing the situation

Look at the pros and cons that apply to the conflicting values and principles, consider consequences, think of public reaction

The Decision

Appeal to a moral theory and show why the expected outcome is superior.

Yuval Noah Harari

Podcast interview, discussed how the printing press ruined everything

Fake News Scandal

Trump campaigners and twitter bots manufactured Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring in a pizza restaurant

Socrates

Traveled through Greece asking questions concerned with justice and goodness

The Socratic Method

question and answer dialogue to stimulate critical thinking and understanding all perspectives

General Obligations

apply to all members of society, cheating theft lying

Particularistic Obligations

determined by membership within a specific group, professional, religious

Pirates Creed of Ethics

First ever code of ethics in the 17th century

Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5B to Settle lawsuit with book authors

Illegally stored and downloaded millions of books to feed model, has to pay each author $3K

Right-Wing Chatbot with heavily biased answers

New issue idk

AI Slop

After Hurricane Helene, AI Slop slowed down real news

Chat v Deepseek

Different chatbots have different answers to ethical questions

Generative AI

uses neural networks (machine learning modeled on the human brain) to let computer recognize patterns

Deception

Outright lying, misleading, misrepresenting, omitting important information

Societal Impacts of Deception

Society depends on the belief that people will exchange and share information that is true

Kate Middleton AP photo

Had to kill it due to AI

Edited Obama Oil Spill photo

The economist edited out the plans he was looking at

Deception in Advertising

You’ll look younger in seven days!

Puffery in Advertising

Best coffee in the world!

Millennials are growing horns from looking at their phones too much!

Very terrible study

Food Lion

Journalists got jobs at Food Lion butcher counter to discover very unsafe practices, ABC did not commit fraud

SPJ Code of Ethics (Society of Professional Journalists)

1. Seek Truth and Report It

2. Minimize Harm

3. Act Independently

4. Be Accountable and Transparent

*IN HIERARCHAL ORDER

PRSA Code of Ethics (Public Relations Society of America)

● Advocacy — serving the public interest by acting as a responsible advocate for those we represent

● Honesty — adhering to the highest standards of accuracy and truth

● Expertise — advancing the profession through continued professional development and sharing knowledge

● Independence — providing objective counsel and being accountable for our actions

● Loyalty — being faithful to those we represent, while honoring our obligation to serve the public interest

● Fairness — dealing fairly with clients, employers, competitors, peers, vendors, the media, and the public