Arguments and cases was published on 10 November 2013 by Routledge.
Journalism Ethics: Arguments and Cases for the 21st Century by Roger Patching and Martin Hirst explores the major ethical dilemmas facing journalists in the digital age.
Engaging with both the theory and practice of journalism ethics, this text explains the key ethical concepts and dilemmas in journalism and provides an international range of examples and case studies, considering traditional and social media from a global perspective.
Journalism Ethics offers an introductory philosophical underpinning to ethics that traces the history of the freedom of expression from the time of Greek philosophers like Aristotle, through the French and American revolutions, to modern day.
Throughout the book Patching and Hirst examine ethically-challenging issues such as deception, trial by media, dealing with sources and privacy intrusion. They also explore continuing ethical fault lines around accuracy, bias, fairness and objectivity, chequebook journalism, the problems of the foreign correspondent, the conflicts between ethics and the law and between journalists and public relations consultants.
Concluding with a step-by-step guide to ethical thinking on the job, this textbook is an invaluable resource for students of journalism, media and communication.
Section I: The theoretical framework for arguments and cases 1. Ethics and Philosophy 2. An age of revolutions: Journalism, ethics and freedom of the press 3. Journalism ethics today
Section II: Ethics in practice 4. How far do you go? Deception and the public interest 5. ‘Do you want lies with that?’ – The problems with chequebook journalism 6. Crisis, what crisis? Foreign correspondence and war reporting – The price of truth
Section III: Dealing with the law – ethically speaking 7. Covering the courts and legal issues 8. Trial by media 9. Fair dealing – sources, shield laws and PR
Section IV: The big issues in media ethics 10. Do we need to know? Privacy and the press, an ethico-legal fault line 11. The Ethics of the Image 12. Social media: the game-changer 13. Ethical decision-making in the newsroom
Ethical Martini 