Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies

Ethics: Communication Ethics in Postnarrative Terms

173 Ethics Communicat ion Et hics in Post na r r at ive Ter ms Cl if f or d Chr ist ia ns Ethical formalism has been the dominant paradigm in communication ethics. Formalist ethical systems are based on rules, principles, and doctrines that set standards for human behavior. Through reason the human species is distinctive, and through rationality moral canons are understood to be legitimate. Ethics is typically grounded in prescriptions, norms, and ideals external to society and culture. In mainstream professional ethics, an apparatus of neutral standards is constructed in terms of the major issues media practitioners face in their everyday routines. Cultural studies understands morality in different terms, with its assumption that the moral domain is intrinsic to human life. We are not constituted as ethical selves antecedently; rather, moral values unfold dialectically in human interaction. In contrast to prescriptive codes, morality is inscribed in narrative. Ethical understanding is a cultural product (Baier 1986). Moral commitments are embedded in the practices of particular social groups, and they are communicated through a community’s stories. The important issues in communication ethics revolve around these alternative trajectories. But neither option meets the demands of a sophisticated critical cultural studies. While narrative ethics has located a fundamental weakness in rule- 174 Clifford Christians driven formalism, its relativism leaves communication ethics with an empty center. With its critical orientation, a normative dialogic ethics is most compatible with the field and a model of communication ethics for the future. Formalist Media Ethics The first American newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was shut down after one day on September 26, 1690, when Massachusetts authorities found its news offensive. In fact, colonial newspaper publishers and reporters were often criticized. But the failings of the press were not specifically linked to ethical principles until the end of the nineteenth century. The 1890s saw informal debates about content and newspaper practices replaced by reflection based on ethical precepts (Dicken-Garcia 1989). A commonsense utilitarian formalism emerged as the overall framework, that is, rules and guidelines for producing the greatest possible balance of good over evil. Sensationalism had been a staple of the entire nineteenth century, but the Hearst and Pulitzer circulation battles during the Spanish-American War made it a serious issue of principle in the late 1890s. As new electronic communication systems crossed oceans and borders with sensitive military, diplomatic, and commercial information, the ethics of privacy took on urgency. Freebies and junkets were treated more systematically by internal mechanisms and enforcement. Also late in the century, a platform was laid for the free press–fair trial debate, although only in the minimal terms of insisting on press rights. The rudimentary work to establish moral principles during the 1890s evolved into a serious enterprise early in the twentieth century through codes of ethics and journalism education. The first journalistic code of ethics officially adopted was the Kansas Code, endorsed by the Kansas Editorial Association in 1910. Several statewide codes soon followed: in Missouri in 1921,South Dakota and Oregon in 1922,and Washington in 1923.Local newspapers also prepared their own codes during the 1910s and 1920s—some explicit (“always verify names”) and others moralistic (“be vigorous but not vicious”). In 1928 the National Association of Broadcasters prepared a radio code consisting of eight guidelines designed to encourage broadcasting “in the public interest.” The star among early media codes was the Canons of Journalism, adopted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1923, the second year of its existence. Several journalism associations copied or imitated its content during the 1920s. The currently popular Society of Professional Journalists/ Sigma Delta Chi (SPJ/SDX) code of ethics, for example, owes its origin in 1926 to the ASNE canons. Codes are routinely forgotten along the road to meeting Et h ic s 175 deadlines, paying the bills, and protecting the press’s independence, but they presume that while news media have a guaranteed right to disseminate information , they must do so responsibly, according to regulations that the press itself establishes. In the ethics of formalism, canons of practice—that is, codes of ethics—are the conventional format for moral principles. The 1920s saw the publication of four journalism texts committed to formalist ethics: Nelson Crawford’s Ethics of Journalism (1924), Leon Flint’s Conscience of the Newspaper (1925), William Gibbons’s Newspaper Ethics (1926), and Albert Henning’s Ethics and Practices of Journalism (1932). While...