Disrupting Journalism Ethics

Disrupting Journalism Ethics sets out to disrupt and change how we think about journalism and its ethics. The book contends that long-established ways of thinking, which have come down to us from the history of journalism, need radical conceptual reform, with alternate conceptions of the role of journalism and fresh principles to evaluate practice. Through a series of disruptions, the book undermines the traditional principles of journalistic neutrality and "just the facts" reporting. It proposes an alternate philosophy of journalism as engagement for democracy. The aim is a journalism ethic better suited to an age of digital and global media. As a philosophical pragmatist, Stephen J. A. Ward critiques traditional conceptions of accuracy, neutrality, detachment and patriotism, evaluating their capacity to respond to ethical dilemmas for journalists in the 21st century. The book proposes a holistic mindset for doing journalism ethics, a theory of journalism as advocacy for egalitarian democracy, and a global redefinition of basic journalistic norms. The book concludes by outlining the shape of a future journalism ethics, employing these alternative notions. Disrupting Journalism Ethics is an important intervention into the role of journalism today. It asks: what new role journalists should play in today’s digital media world? And what new mind-set, new aims, and new standards ought jounalists to embrace? The book aims to persuade—and provoke—ethicists, journalists, students, and members of the public to disrupt and invent.

This book provides journalism students with an easy-to-read yet theoretically rich guide to the dialectics, contradictions, problems, and promises encapsulated in the term ‘journalism ethics’. Offering an overview of a series of crises that have shaken global journalism to its foundations in the last decade, including the coronavirus pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the 2020 US presidential election, the book explores the structural and ethical problems that shape the journalism industry today. The authors discuss the three principle existential crises that continue to plague the news industry: a failing business model, technological disruption, and growing public mistrust of journalism. Other topics covered include social media ethics, privacy concerns, chequebook journalism, as well as a new analysis of journalism theory that critiques the well-worn tropes of objectivity, the Fourth Estate, freedom of the press, and the marketplace of ideas to develop a sophisticated materialist reimagining of journalism ethics. This is a key text for students of journalism, mass communication, and media ethics, as well as for academics, researchers, and communications professionals interested in contemporary journalism ethics.

An argument for a new system of ethics in journalism that will take into account its global reach and impact.

This book critically explores the impact that digital technology has had on the practices and norms of sports journalism. In the wake of major digital disruptions in news reporting, the author analyses how sports journalism has been particularly vulnerable to challenges and attacks on its expertise because of its historically weak commitment to professionalism. Ultimately, an argument is built that sports journalism’s professional distinctiveness will depend on its capacity to produce rigorous news work at a time when its core, routinised practices are being displaced by bloggers and team media. Recent developments such as The Athletic, a start-up that has built its business model around quality sports storytelling, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic offer hope that a paradigm shift in digital sports journalism culture towards serious reporting is starting to emerge. The question for both the industry and scholars going forward is whether these changes will crystallise and take hold in the long term. Disrupting Sports Journalism is a valuable text for researchers and students in sports media and journalism studies, as well as for industry professionals seeking an insight into developments in the field.

Does objectivity exist in the news media? In The Invention of Journalism Ethics, Stephen Ward argues that given the current emphasis on interpretation, analysis, and perspective, journalists and the public need a new theory of objectivity. He explores the varied ethical assertions of journalists over the past few centuries, focusing on the changing relationship between journalist and audience. This historical analysis leads to an innovative theory of pragmatic objectivity that enables journalists and the public to recognize and avoid biased and unbalanced reporting. Ward convincingly demonstrates that journalistic objectivity is not a set of absolute standards but the same fallible but reasonable objectivity used for making decisions in other professions and public institutions. Considered a classic in the field since its first publication in 2004, this second edition includes new chapters that bring the book up to speed with journalism ethics in the twenty-first century by focusing on the growing dominance of online journalism and calling for a radical approach to journalism ethics reform. Ward also addresses important developments that have occurred in the last decade, including the emergence of digital journalism ethics and global journalism ethics.

This handbook is one of the first comprehensive research and teaching tools for the developing area of global media ethics. The advent of new media that is global in reach and impact has created the need for a journalism ethics that is global in principles and aims. For many scholars, teachers and journalists, the existing journalism ethics, e.g. existing codes of ethics, is too parochial and national. It fails to provide adequate normative guidance for a media that is digital, global and practiced by professional and citizen. A global media ethics is being constructed to define what responsible public journalism means for a new global media era. Currently, scholars write texts and codes for global media, teach global media ethics, analyse how global issues should be covered, and gather together at conferences, round tables and meetings. However, the field lacks an authoritative handbook that presents the views of leading thinkers on the most important issues for global media ethics. This handbook is a milestone in the field, and a major contribution to media ethics.

Online media present both old and new ethical issues for journalists who must make decisions in an interactive, instantaneous environment short on normative standards or guidelines. This user-friendly book guides prospective and professional journalists through ethical questions encountered only online. Including real-life examples and perspectives from online journalists in every chapter, the book examines the issues of gathering information, reporting, interviewing, and writing for mainstream news organizations on the Web. It considers the ethical implications of linking, interactivity, verification, transparency, and Web advertising, as well as the effects of convergence on newsrooms. It also addresses the question of who is a journalist and what is journalism in an age when anyone can be a publisher. Each chapter includes a complex case study that promotes critical thinking and classroom discussion about how to apply the ethical issues covered.

Hacking Gender and Technology in Journalism addresses the question of whether journalism’s new digital spaces suffer from the same gendered structures as traditional media organisations, or whether they go beyond such bias. This book offers insights into the challenges that women journalists face in relation to technological innovation, as well as the potential for developing strategies for empowerment that it offers. More specifically, there is a focus on the gendering of digital skills, the construction of gender in new digital spheres of journalism, and how these changes can lead to the disruption of gender inequalities in journalism. This book will be of interest to scholars in multimedia journalism, media ethics, and gender studies. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.