Understanding Media Ethics

Our new media landscape of social networking, blogging, and interactivity has forever changed how media content is produced and distributed. Choices about how to gather, evaluate and publish information are ever more complex. This blurring of boundaries between general public values and the values of media professionals has made media ethics an essential issue for media professionals, but also demonstrates how it must be intrinsically part of the wider public conversation. This book teaches students to navigate ethical questions in a digital society and apply ethical concepts and guidelines to their own practice. Using case studies, judgement call boxes and further reading, Understanding Media Ethics clarifies the moral concepts in media contexts, and enables students to apply them to practical decision making through real-life worked examples. Covering key topics such as media freedoms, censorship, privacy, standards, taste, regulation, codes of practice and the ethics of representation, this is an essential guide for students in journalism, media, communication and public relations.
A student friendly exploration of both the theory and practice of media ethics. Full of pedagogy and covering the digital alongside the classical, no other book on the market is as up-to-date or as full of case studies.
In September 2014 David Horner retired as a Principal Lecturer from the University of Brighton, having worked there since September 1992. He has held the position of Head of the Division of Information and Media Studies (2003 - 2007). He has served on many university and faculty committees including both Research Strategy Committee and Research Ethics Committee. He has supervised 10 PhD students and was for a number of years Research Student Division Leader for the School of Computing, Mathematics and Information Studies. He has been also Course Leader for MA Information Studies (1998 - 2003). His research interests were primarily in the field of applied ethics: Information, Media and Computer Ethics. He has published many papers and given numerous conference presentations. He developed 'film and philosophy' as a specialism within Brighton's media degree. David has developed and taught courses in media and communication ethics for over fifteen years at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Since September 2015 he has been studying for an MA, by research, at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Exeter on the philosophy of mind.
This book engages the reader in a complex but clear exposition of issues in media ethics. It offers a valuable introduction for the undergraduate reader, one which uses accessible contemporary case studies to explore a framework of challenging ethical philosophy, leading from Aristotle and Kant to Murdoch and Leveson.-- (10/14/2013)