The dilemma of media ethics

IN Media Practice | 30/12/2011

The American actor Charlton Heston once said about the movies: “The trouble with movies as art is that it’s a business. The trouble with movies as a business is that it’s an art.” Something similar can be said about modern media. The trouble with it as an instrument to inform and educate is that it’s a business. Conversely, the trouble with it as a business is that it is meant to inform and educate. Hence, the modern media person is faced with the difficult challenge of balancing two very different goals. 

In India, the situation is further muddied by the fact that the balance has tipped overwhelmingly in favour of the business aspect.  Just how much is evident from the front pages of national dailies. Not so long ago the very idea of an ad on the front page was abhorrent. Then ads started appearing in the bottom right-hand corner of the front page. Today we have a situation where one half of the front page can be blocked by an ad.

A newspaper giving up one half of its most important page to advertising is a fair indication of the extent to which the idea of making money is on the ascendant. In order to ensure that the informational and educational role of the media is not completely lost in this headlong pursuit of the buck, ethics must form an integral part of any media education.  Otherwise, the already lopsided balance could tip over irrevocably. 

That said, the ethical education imparted needs to be of the kind that is relevant as well as useful. Unless the journalism student is intending to do a Ph.D. in the field, there is no reason to be longwinded about meta-ethics that applies philosophical questions to journalism. Does a student seeking a career in journalism need to get into long discussions about the nature of goodness?  Probably not. The focus, instead, should be on normative ethics that combines practice with principles and lays down the standards that need to be promoted. In addition, some knowledge of descriptive ethics that uses social science methodologies to report on journalistic issues would not hurt. 

The area of normative ethics, however, encompasses everything from news manipulation to taste.  While the student should be familiar with all issues, it is important to stress those that are more relevant in the Indian context. At the end of the day, all journalism is local. Even international news is tailored to address local concerns. Therefore, it is only prudent for any course on media ethics to emphasise issues the student is likely to face in the workplace. For instance, when I was teaching journalism in the United States, we would spend a long time debating privacy issues. In India, however, the invasion of privacy is not so significant. Indian paparazzi are nowhere near as invasive as their Western counterparts and the Indian public has consistently displayed a lack of interest in the private lives of its public figures unless they happen to be movie stars. 

Stories about the private lives of politicians, for example, have only caught on when they are tied to some other major issue. The Bhanwari Devi episode is a case in point. Therefore, it would be counterproductive to spend hours lecturing Indian journalism students on privacy issues by trotting out case studies that have little relevance in the Indian context.  Instead, that time would be better spent focusing on the two big ethical issues confronting Indian media—news manipulation and conflict with the law. 

Paid news is the most blatant form of news manipulation and for that reason tends to grab the headlines. However, the more insidious forms, such as the wielding of advertiser clout and the media subverting the truth and concocting stories to further their own interests or those of various interest groups, are widespread. On the issue of media coming into conflict with the law, instances of deception and trespass while practicing investigative journalism are commonplace. Any course on media ethics must include these two ethical dilemmas as its cornerstones.

Former American President Theodore Roosevelt said: “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”  That is just as true in journalism as in any other field.  Journalists traffic on their good name. Once they besmirch their reputation through unethical behaviour they lose the trust of their audience and go down the slippery slope to oblivion. That lesson needs to be drilled into budding journalists before they step into the real world of the media.

 In a country like India, it cannot be stressed enough, because the balancing act I referred to in the beginning of the article is more difficult to perform. In the West, as the News of the World phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom shows, even a Rupert Murdoch can be hauled in by the long arm of the law. In India, corruption is rampant while the application of the law continues to be arbitrary at best. 

The average Indian possesses an unhealthy disrespect for rules of any kind and the high and mighty believe they can buy or intimidate their way out of any situation.  At the same time, the lure of easy money has never been greater. In such a scenario, the only thing standing between a journalist and a sell-out is a strong code of ethics. Hence, it is important to make ethics as much a part of a media education as the inverted pyramid. 

(The author, winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, is a columnist and a teacher of journalism.)