this issue
previous article in this issuenext article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: Social Dialogue and Media Ethics
Author(s): CHRISTIANS, Clifford G.
Journal: Ethical Perspectives
Volume: 7    Issue: 2-3   Date: September 2000   
Pages: 182-193
DOI: 10.2143/EP.7.2.503805

Abstract :
The central question of this conference is whether the media can contribute to high quality social dialogue. The prospects for resolving that question positively in the “sound and fury” depend on recovering the idea of truth. At present the news media are lurching along from one crisis to another with an empty centre. We need to articulate a believable concept of truth as communication's master principle. As the norm of healing is to medicine, justice to politics, critical thinking to education, craftsmanship to engineering, and stewardship to business, so truth-telling is the news profession's occupational norm. Truth-telling is the ethical framework that fundamentally reorders the media's professional culture and enables them to enrich social dialogue rather than undermine it.

Download article