Media Culture And Morality

First published in 1994. The media report terrible events. But the academic study of the media is increasingly trivial and lacking in moral seriousness. Media, Culture and Morality examines how this paradoxical situation could have emerged. The author seizes upon the disparity between the enormous production of books in the field and the lack of substantive insights generated. He argues that such a mass of self-conscious criticism should have provided a moral critique of contemporary culture not the quagmire of theoretical verbiage and threadbare politicizing we are faced with today. The book is a disturbing speculation on the fate of moral and cultural values in a media-dominated world.

First published in 1994. The media report terrible events. But the academic study of the media is increasingly trivial and lacking in moral seriousness. Media, Culture and Morality examines how this paradoxical situation could have emerged. The author seizes upon the disparity between the enormous production of books in the field and the lack of substantive insights generated. He argues that such a mass of self-conscious criticism should have provided a moral critique of contemporary culture not the quagmire of theoretical verbiage and threadbare politicizing we are faced with today. The book is a disturbing speculation on the fate of moral and cultural values in a media-dominated world.

Popular culture provides a daily catalog of cultural attitudes, values, and practices. From television sitcoms to the daily news, from the theater to the sports stadium, we observe embodiments and enactments of character, virtue, honesty, and integrity (or lack thereof) in situations we find understandable, if not familiar. The essays in this volume address popular mediated constructions of ethical and unethical communication in news, sports, advertising, film, television, and the internet. Emphasis is on the consumption of popular culture messages, as well as how auditors make moral sense out of what they read, hear, and observe.

As modern media shifts from the distribution of information to the creation of entertainment, a fresh inquiry into the ethics of media becomes vital. This collection of 19 essays provides useful guidelines and perspectives for the producers and consumers of entertainment. Topics covered include the contemporary creation of celebrity, the effects of entertainment on children, the hybridization of entertainment and news, author and intellectual property rights, and the role of human dignity in modern media, among many others. The essays question the nature and ethics of media entertainment as it becomes increasingly pervasive in our time.

Ethics and Media Culture straddles the practical and ethical issues of contention encountered by journalists. The book's various contributors cover a diversity of issues and viewpoints, attempting to broaden out the debates particularly in relation to Journalism Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture and Communications, Philosophy and History.The debate concerning media ethics has intensified in recent years, fuelled mainly by the standards of journalist and media practices. The role of practitioners has taken centre-stage as concerns over what constitutes ethical, and therefore socially acceptable practice and behaviour, by the public, practitioners and intellectuals alike. The discursive relationship between the production and consumption of information is central to the debate regarding moral conduct, particularly in light of the commercialisation of the media. Considering that media institutions operate in a climate of intense competition, the value of information and its corresponding quality have begun to be critically assessed in terms of ethical understanding. A degree of open-endedness is maintained in discussions throughout this book, which is intended to engage the reader with the issues raised and determine their own conclusions.