Morals and the Media: Ethics in Canadian Journalism (review)

It's easy to fall prey to the notion that Canadian journalists are more ethical than our Western counterparts. Ethical violations in this country simply haven't occurred on the scale of either the United States or the United Kingdom. We haven't yet had the equivalent of Janet Cooke (who invented a heroine-addicted child in an award-winning series in the Washington Post) or Stephen Glass (who also invented people and places, but many, many more of them for the New Republic, among others), or Jayson Blair (who fabricated elements of more than thirty stories or so for the New York Times). Nor have our journalists used fake id to procure a job at Rideau Hall, the better to gain access to a visiting politician's breakfast habits. (A uk journalist got a job at Buckingham Palace in order to serve George W. Bush his breakfast. He was exposed before Bush's favourite cereal could be made public.)

Then again, perhaps it's safer to say that when Canadian journalists offend, they aren't quite so dramatic about it. The reality is that professional ethical violations have occurred, do occur, and no doubt will continue to occur given how treacherous it is to navigate the murky waters of journalism.

Recognizing the need for journalistic ethics has been slow in coming, however. While journalistic codes of ethics commonly exist within larger media outlets, smaller ones are less inclined to commit anything to paper. So former journalist Nick Russell made a great contribution when, in 1994, the University of British Columbia Press published his book on ethics in Canadian journalism. It was timely, highly practical, and served as an essential reference for journalists.

However, in the twelve years since its publication, the media climate in Canada has drastically changed. Industrial convergence has altered the practice of daily journalism, media ownership has become even more concentrated, and on-line journalism is now a force to be reckoned with. Add to that the kinds of belt-tightening taking place in the media as a whole, and it's definitely time for an updated version of Morals and the Media: Ethics in Canadian Journalism.

In this edition, Russell addresses the implications of those changes. He isn't afraid of tackling the issues head-on. For example, in his chapter 'Playing Fast and Loose with the Truth,' Russell admits to the pressures that could drive a journalist to do precisely that (e.g., omitting critical facts to avoid causing offence, or enhancing details and/or facts to improve people's perception of a person/political party/cause). They're real, they're tempting, and they exist no matter in which arm of the media a journalist works. As with every chapter, Russell provides scenarios that actually occurred and discusses how the players chose to resolve them.

And while he doesn't 'talk down' to readers, Russell describes and examines topics in a way that serves to encapsulate the issues and reduce them to their essence. This is not only a useful and important learning tool for journalism students; it's a wonderful way of introducing non-journalists to this under-examined area. (However, both would have been better served had the book been more conscientiously copy edited. There's no excuse for spelling errors and they are scattered throughout.)

But reducing a scenario to its essence doesn't mean the route to its resolution is obvious. In fact, one of the most disconcerting aspects of making ethical decisions is that there is often not one decisive right or wrong solution. After all, ethics doesn't deal with legalism; it is part and parcel of life – with all its messiness. Russell begins his book with an overview of 'values and evaluation,' and that's helpful. But it would have been useful to see it continued in some form throughout each chapter – especially as each one ends with 'Tough Calls,' scenarios that require readers to embark on a decision-making process...