Media Ethics

This paper focuses on how photographs that depict violence and suffering (PVS) may morally impact us, and what we should do with them in the present age. Specifically, through a critical discussion of the works of Susan Sontag, I argue that we have two imperfect duties towards PVS. Firstly, I argue that we have a duty to keep our exposure to PVS to a moderate amount. I echo the early Sontag’s worry that overexposure to PVS may desensitize the viewers, but (...) I also argue, by analogy to Nussbaum’s account of moral novels, for Sontag’s later view that some familiarity with PVS is important for our moral development. Consequently, I maintain that we have an imperfect duty to make ourselves familiar with some PVS, but we also ought to prevent ourselves from being overexposed to PVS. Secondly, I discuss Sontag’s skepticism of the ethical capacity of PVS to change our moral beliefs. I first argue in support of Sontag’s claim that photographs lack any inherent moral meaning. I then claim, in partial agreement with a recent objection to Sontag by Susie Linfield, that if photographs have no inherent moral meaning, then it is plausible to claim that the viewers have a moral duty to actively engage with PVS and construct their moral meaning. Pace Linfield, however, I argue that this duty can only be an imperfect duty, as such a perfect duty is too demanding. (shrink)

Simone Weil describes love as radical attention that suspends egoistic concerns to pursue solely the good of another. Although contemporary communication ethics emphasizes responsiveness and dialogue, it seldom addresses how individuals can entirely overcome self-interest to transparently recognize the other's need. This article proposes that Weil’s concepts (particularly attention, décréation, and metaxu) fill that theoretical gap. Grounding Weil’s ethics in Plato and mysticism, the discussion places her ideas in dialogue with current communication ethics, demonstrating their practical relevance. Weil’s notion of (...) attention provides a profound reinterpretation of ethical listening as a form of selfless presence, while décréation offers a framework for decentering ego-driven speech. Further, metaxu clarifies the ethical role of communication mediators in facilitating genuine understanding rather than superficial engagement or division. Ultimately, Weil's ethics offers a normative criterion for ethical discourse: communication is morally good when it serves as a channel for the genuine well-being of the other. (shrink)

This paper establishes the force execution layer of the Protected Class Architecture — the military and covert operation mechanism that eliminates nation-states whose monetary independence threatens the dollar hegemony architecture. The paper traces the full 70-year prior chain from the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 through the current Iran pressure campaign, establishing that the Clark list — Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran — is not a post-September 11 innovation but the most recent iteration of a (...) mechanism operating continuously since 1953. The PNAC document's explicit statement that the desired military transformation would require 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor' is examined against the documented personnel overlap between PNAC signatories and Bush administration officials who occupied every position required to execute the Clark list. The Wesley Clark testimony is used as a structural probe rather than primary evidence. The execution record — twenty-two years against the specific Clark list across five administrations spanning both parties — is established as the primary evidence of prior planning. The Saudi dual-function problem is named directly: the United States classified for 14 years the documented connections between the Saudi government and September 11 hijackers in order to protect a petrodollar relationship with the same government whose religious export produced the catalyzing event the architecture had publicly stated it required. The Ukraine conflict is examined as the current force execution iteration — the proxy method deployed against a theater where direct military intervention is not viable. The cross-partisan continuity of the force execution layer across five administrations is established as the architecture's most visible structural signature. (shrink)

This paper establishes the monetary structure layer of the Protected Class Architecture — the dollar hegemony system whose perpetuation is the primary strategic objective that the personal management layer manages toward and the force execution layer defends. The paper traces the full prior chain from the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 through Bretton Woods, the petrodollar agreement of 1974, and the emerging CBDC transition, establishing that the monetary architecture has been defended through force against every significant challenge across 73 years. (...) The Mossadegh-Arbenz-Kennedy-Allende sequence is established as the documented prior chain that makes the Clark list legible as continuation rather than post-9/11 innovation. Kennedy's Executive Order 11110 — its issuance June 4, 1963 and its reversal within weeks of his assassination — is examined as the domestic iteration of the same structural pattern that produced the 1953 Iranian coup and the 1973 Chilean coup. The paper examines the BIS architecture, IMF conditionality as monetary weapon, the SWIFT disconnection mechanism, the Vatican Bank as the spiritual authority node of the financial architecture, and the specific fate of every head of state who challenged dollar denomination of oil. The CBDC transition is named as a civilizational rather than monetary event: programmable money enables transaction conditionality, jurisdictional confinement, and protocol-level blocking of economic participation without legal process — the completion of the Hoover file system's leverage function at the scale of every individual economic act. The paper concludes that the architecture is protecting the right to define what human value is, and that the CBDC layer is the most complete implementation of that protection function in the architecture's 175-year history. (shrink)

Suport pentru cursul de „Etică artistică și deontologie academică“, Universitatea de Arte din București. Principiul de organizare este dat de Codul de Etică al UNArte. Cum în acest cod de etică conceptele operatorii sunt cele de integritate și deontologie, prima parte le este dedicată, nu înainte de a explica ce este etica artistică (Cap. 1). După o discuție sumară referitoare la codul de etică universitară (Cap. 2), sunt discutate pe larg două mari problematici care apar în acest cod: este vorba (...) de etica cercetării, care cuprinde o secțiune despre plagiat (Cap. 3) și o secțiune despre practici de redactare a textelor academice (Cap. 4), și drepturile de autor, care cuprinde o secțiune despre drepturile de autor în genere (Cap. 5) și una despre drepturile de autor asupra imaginilor (Cap. 6). Abordarea este una mixtă: pe de o parte, atât sincronică, cât și pe alocuri diacronică, pe de altă parte, în principal descriptivă, dar uneori prescriptivă, în special acolo unde este vorba de a oferi un fel de ghid (în felul în care se fac notele de subsol etc.). Am încercat să scriu acest suport de curs într-o manieră cât mai clară și facilă, profitând de el și pentru a-i familiariza pe studenții de la Universitatea Națională de Arte din București cu diverse distincții filozofice și cu istoria filozofiei, nu doar pentru a le oferi premisele înțelegerii codului de etică, ci și în vederea dezvoltării unei gândiri critice și a unei sensibilități morale. (shrink)

The Bayesian polarization literature asks how rational agents can diverge given common evidence. This is the wrong question. In real-world political environments, evidence is not common. Fox News does not show what MSNBC shows. The convergence theorems fail not because of subtle differences in priors, likelihoods, or credibility assessments, but because their central premise—shared observation—is violated at scale. The existing literature models second-order effects while ignoring the first-order cause. This paper argues that most political polarization requires no sophisticated explanation: people (...) see different things. Interventions targeting cognition address the wrong problem. Infrastructure is the target. (shrink)

This introduction to the Global Media Journal – German Edition’s Special Section on content moderation critically examines the governance challenges of regulating online content in the digital age. It argues that the removal of content deemed illicit, detrimental or otherwise unacceptable by established standards is often framed as neutral gatekeeping even though it operates within contested power dynamics that lack rigorous and sound frameworks to assess its real-world impacts on freedom of expression, safety, and social justice. The authors highlight historical (...) parallels to pre-modern censorship struggles following the invention of the printing press, emphasising that digital public spheres require forms of robust civility, not mere technical fixes. Current practices of content moderation reveal deep tensions: platforms increasingly employ automated systems for this endeavour, yet this risks amplifying harmful content and creating ethical dilemmas, while low-wage, high-stress labour conditions for human moderators (“clickworkers”) expose systemic exploitation. The Special Section addresses these gaps through four case studies. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral philosophers can have a special role in helping members of society come to choose which moral theories to believe. Importantly, the argument does not depend on the idea that moral philosophers (more) reliably have true moral beliefs (or are “Strong Moral Experts”). Instead, the argument is that moral philosophers are well-placed to develop understanding of moral theories by drawing out valid implications (they are “Weak Moral Experts”). By developing valid moral arguments, and by making the (...) relevant implications accessible to society, moral philosophers can help people understand the costs and benefits of various moral theories, allowing them to make more informed choices. This does not imply that everyone will agree; there is room for disagreement about the weight to put on various theoretical costs and benefits. But it does give a metaphilosophical picture of the role of moral philosophers, justify certain kinds of public philosophy, and explain the value that moral philosophers can add to society at the philosophy-public interface. [Open access]. (shrink)

This chapter explores the significance of the changed legal test for dishonesty arising from (Ivey v. Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd. t/a Crockfords (2017) for the professional regulation of doctors. This is an important topic because dishonesty is a key consideration in tribunals’ assessment of doctors’ fitness to practise. The chapter assesses the extent to which the reasons for the Supreme Court’s adoption of the Ivey test in the criminal law apply to Medical Practitioner Tribunals (MPT), given their different functions and (...) the different functions of dishonesty within them. It concludes that while an objective test based on the standards of ordinary people is preferable to a subjective test for the MPT, the justification and application of such a standard is less straightforward than in the criminal law. (shrink)

In contemporary liberal-democratic orders, political contestation is often framed as a struggle between radically opposed forces. One a destabilizing threat to the civic order, the other its responsible defender. The surface narrative is that these forces emerge organically from the cultural and economic conditions of the moment. Yet when examined structurally, the apparent antagonism can be reinterpreted as a mutually reinforcing cycle. A form of managed volatility in which the threat is permitted, amplified, and eventually neutralized in ways that preserve (...) the fundamental architecture of power. (shrink)

The Borg and the Federation appear, at first glance, to be antithetical civilizations. One annihilates difference in the name of a perfect, unified collective; the other sanctifies individuality as the highest political and moral good. Between them, every science-fiction parable about freedom and control seems to find its footing. Yet when examined through the lens of symbolic lock-in, this polarity collapses. They are not opposites but mirrors. Two modes of the same structural failure; two architectures of consensus whose differences are (...) aesthetic, not ontological. (shrink)

In this thesis, I critically examine how institutional corruption, operationalised through epistemic clientelism and fiduciary opacity, systematically compromises journalism covering UK higher education (HE). Drawing explicitly on my previously developed theoretical frameworks—Epistemic Clientelism Theory (Kahl 2025), fiduciary epistemology, and constitutional critiques of media institutions as epistemic gatekeepers (‘Epistemic Gatekeepers as the Fourth Estate’, Kahl 2025)—and integrating Lawrence Lessig’s theory of institutional corruption and Brian Klaas’s analysis of elite power dynamics, I demonstrate that prominent UK media organisations (notably Times Higher Education (...) and The Guardian) have become structurally dependent upon elite institutional and commercial interests. Through rigorous empirical analysis, detailed case studies (e.g., Anna Fazackerley’s affiliations with Policy Exchange, THE’s commercial relationships), and sociological network mapping, I expose how entrenched networks of privilege, financial dependencies, and reciprocal professional alignments among journalists, higher education institutions, and policy elites systematically erode democratic accountability, epistemic fairness, and public trust. -/- Further, this research situates journalism within broader elite trajectories connecting privileged education (notably Oxbridge), influential journalistic roles, and subsequent political power—highlighting structural vulnerabilities enabling epistemic control, narrative conformity, and fiduciary breaches. To address these vulnerabilities, I propose robust fiduciary reforms including structurally independent fiduciary journalists, mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosures, a formal Journalistic Hippocratic Oath, fiduciary oversight boards, regular fiduciary audits, and strengthened legislative oversight. Ultimately, this thesis articulates and defends my original theoretical model—The Theory of Institutional Corruption through Epistemic Clientelism and Fiduciary Opacity—clarifying the entrenched elite power dynamics underpinning contemporary journalism and democratic governance. The theory thus provides an essential theoretical foundation and practical blueprint for restoring integrity, transparency, and democratic legitimacy within journalism covering UK higher education. (shrink)

In this thesis, I reconceptualise contemporary media institutions as constitutional epistemic actors whose governance roles parallel traditional legislative, executive, and judicial state functions. Drawing upon my original theoretical frameworks—Epistemic Clientelism Theory (ECT) and fiduciary epistemology—and canonical scholarship (Foucault, Habermas, Gramsci, Chomsky/Herman), I demonstrate how media entities exercise significant epistemic control, shaping democratic legitimacy, historical narratives, and societal discourse. Through empirical case studies, I illustrate practices of epistemic clientelism and algorithmic gatekeeping, highlighting constitutional concerns such as democratic accountability deficits and epistemic (...) injustice. In response, I propose a robust fiduciary-epistemic accountability framework, outlining fiduciary duties (transparency, epistemic fairness, accountability) and practical institutional mechanisms. Ultimately, I argue that explicit constitutional recognition and fiduciary regulation of epistemic gatekeepers is crucial for democratic governance, epistemic justice, and historical integrity. History is written by those who control epistemic gatekeeping; safeguarding democratic legitimacy thus demands explicit fiduciary governance of epistemic power. (shrink)

Media Ethics has been designed as a textbook for under- and post-graduate students of Mass Communication and Journalism courses. It discusses key ethical issues in the light of the new face of journalism and the dynamic changes that are taking place in media today.

What are ethics? -- News : towards a definition -- Morality of reporting -- The good journalist -- Truth, accuracy, objectivity and trust -- Privacy and intrusion -- Reputation -- Gathering the news -- Reporting the vulnerable -- Deciding what to publish -- Harm and offence -- The internet and journalism ethics -- Professional practice -- Regulation -- History of print regulation in the twenty-first century -- History of press regulation in the twenty-first century -- History of broadcast regulation -- (...) Codes of conduct as a regulatory system -- Press regulation systems in the UK and Ireland -- Broadcast regulation systems in the UK and Ireland -- The experinece abroad. (shrink)

On journalistic ethics of mass media in Sri Lanka and the role of Śrī Laṅkā Puvatpat Maṇḍalaya.

Önsöz 6 Yenilenmiş 2. baskıya önsöz 7 İçindekiler 8 Kısaltmalar 11 Giriş 13 BİRİNCİ BÖLÜM 1. AHLAK VE BASIN AHLAKI ALANINDA OLUŞTURULAN KURUMLAR BAĞLAMINDA GAZETECİNİN ETİK KİMLİĞİ 19 1.1. Ahlak Kavramı 20 1.1.1. Bireyci Ahlak 24 1.1.2. Toplumcu Ahlak 27 1.1.3. Sofist Ahlak Anlayışı 31 1.1.4. Ödev Ahlakı 32 1.1.5. Yararcı Ahlak (Utilitarianism) 35 1.2. Etik Kavramı 38 1.2.1. Etik Değer 40 1.3. Mesleki Etik 43 1.3.1. Basında Etik 46 1.3.2. Din ve Hukuk Yasaları Bağlamında Basında Etik İlkeler 51 1.3.3. (...) Basında Etik Değerlerin Saptanması 54 1.4. Basın Ahlak Kuralları ve Basında Özdenetim 59 1.4.1. Basın Ahlak Kurallarının Kaynakları 65 1.4.2. Basında Özdenetimin Yararlan 67 1.5. Basın Ahlak Kurallarının Uygulanması 68 1.5.1. Gönüllü (ya da İsteğe Bağlı) Kuruluşlar 71 1.5.1.1. Gönüllü Kuruluşların Basın Özgürlüğünün Korunması Açısından Yararları 73 1.5.1.2. Gönüllü Kuruluşların Yaptırım Uygulama Açısından Yetersizlikleri 74 1.5.2. Yasaya Dayanan Zorunlu Kuruluşlar 76 1.5.2.1. Yasaya Dayanan Zorunlu Kuruluşların Yaptırım Uygulama Açısından Üstün Yanlan 77 1.5.2.2. Yasaya Dayanan Zorunlu Kuruluşların Basın Özgürlüğü Açısından Sakıncaları 78 İKİNCİ BÖLÜM 2. BASIN KURAMLARI BAĞLAMINDA GAZETECİNİN ETİK KİMLİĞİ.. 82 2.1. Basında Liberal Kuramın Ortaya Çıkışını Hazırlayan Nedenler.... 83 2.1.1. Basında Liberal Kuramın Dayandığı Düşünsel Kaynaklar 88 2.1.2. Basında Liberal Kurama 20. Yüzyılda Getirilen Eleştiriler 99 2.2. Otoriter ve Totaliter Rejimlerin Basına Yaklaşımları Bağlamında Basında Etik Anlayışın Tartışılması 100 2.3. Toplumsal Sorumluluk Kuramının Ortaya Çıkışı 111 2.3.1. Toplumsal Sorumluluk Kuramının Basına Yönelttiği Eleştirel Yaklaşım 117 2.3.2. Toplumsal Sorumluluk Kuramına Göre Basının Yerine Getirmesi Gereken Görevler 119 2.4. Basında Liberal Kuram İle Toplumsal Sorumluluk Kuramının Karşılaştırılması 122 2.4.1. Liberal ve Toplumsal Sorumluluk Kuramları Temelinde Farklılaşan Özgürlük Anlayışı 127 ÜÇÜNCÜ BÖLÜM 3. TÜRKİYE’DE BASIN AHLAKI OLUŞTURULMASI ÇALIŞMALARININ TARİHÇESİ BAĞLAMINDA GAZETECİNİN ETİK KİMLİĞI 131 3.1. Cumhuriyet Öncesi Dönemde Türk Basınında Basın Ahlakı İle İlgili Yasal Girişimler 136 3.1.1. Basım Etkinliği İle İlgili İlk Düzenlemeler ve Matbaalar Nizamnamesi 136 3.1.2. 1864 Tarihli Matbuat Nizamnamesi 137 3.1.3. Ali Kararname 140 3.1.4. Birinci Meşrutiyet ve Kanunu Esasi’nin Basın Etkinliği Açısından Önemi 141 3.1.5. İkinci Meşrutiyet ve 1909 Basın Kanunu 143 3.1.6. Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Gazetecilerin İlk Örgütlenme Çabalan 147 3.2. Cumhuriyet Sonrası Dönemde Türk Basınını Etkileyen Yasal Düzenlemelerle Basın Ahlakı İle İgili Girişim ve Gelişmeler 148 3.2.1. Birinci Türk Basın Kongresi (25 Mayıs 1935) 152 3.2.2. Basın Birliği 155 3.2.2.1. Basın Birliği’nin Eleştirisi 158 3.2.3. Gazeteciler Cemiyeti’nin Kuruluşu ve Amaçları 161 3.2.4. İkinci Dünya Savaşı Sonrası Türkiye’nin Siyasal Durumu ve DP’nin Kuruluşu 165 3.2.5. 1950-1960 Arasında DP-Basın İlişkileri ve Basın Şeref Divanı’nın Ortaya Çıkış Nedenlerini Hazırlayan Koşullar 170 3.2.5.1. Basın Şeref Divanı’nın Kuruluşu 175 3.2.5.2. Basın Şeref Divanı’nda Yer Alan Kurumların Temsilcileri ve Görevleri 177 3.2.5.3. Basın Şeref Divanı’nın Başarısızlık Nedenleri 178 3.2.6. Basın Şeref Divanı Sonrasında Basın Ahlakı İle İlgili Girişimler 183 3.2.6.1. Basın Konseyi’nin Kuruluşu 196 3.2.6.1.1. Basın Konseyi’ nin Örgütlenme ve Çalışma Biçimi 199 3.2.6.2. Ombudsman (Okur Temsilcisi) 204 Sonuç 212 Ekler 221 Kaynakça 254. (shrink)