Personal notes Flashcards
reasons for the sorry sight of the news business
- Money
- more ?
- pressure to ?
- newspapers: slashing ? shrinking ?
competition
cut ethical corners
staff/ news hole
reasons for the sorry sight of news business:
- Spinmeisters
- seed ?
- preferred rhetorical tool ?
- mistrust in media
- bullshit (image over substance)
Reasons for sorry sight of news business:
- tabloid journalism
- blurring of ?
- leads to hybrid like ?
real and important distinction between news and entertainment
-docudramas, advertorials, infotainment, astroturf
Reasons for sorry sight of news business:
4. political bias
-not since early 19th century ?
-
so many claims of political bias in the press
Brief history of ethical thinking
- goal of aesthetics epistemology and ethics: get past the ? to arrive at?
- ethical: choices reflected on
- unethical: choices based on
purely emotional, subjective and intuitive
a reasoned understanding
- reasoning
- emotion, reflex, assumption
law: what is
ethics: what is
allowed
possible
distinction between ethics and prudence
- prudent=
- prudence does not require
- to be careful
- a moral ranking of available alternatives
a good reason to follow laws even if unjust ?
The Crito - explain
democracy
-socrates unjustly jailed, but said state is more important than individuals and obeying laws is essential even if unjustly applied
for Greeks the key was in telos
- what is telos
- teleology is branch of philosophy focused on ?
- make choice that would
- ends or goals
- outcomes
- produce the most good
deontology is ?
- prominent in ?
- behavior has ? regardless of
deontological vs. teleological
ruled based ethical theory
- middle ages
- moral weight in and of itself/ outcomes
-man the citizen/ man the maker
printing press showed people they were capable of ?
own rational thought
when did rational thought reach zenith ?
enlightenment of mid and late eighteenth century
what is the most common complaint about utilitarianism ?
denies any sense of right or wrong that is independent of outcome
can the existence of morality be proved ?
no
social contract theory
- who ?
- what book
- claimed there was a time before society when people were born with the unlimited natural right to ?
- however one against all proved ?
- people need to voluntarily ?
- thomas hobbes
- leviathan
- do just as they pleased
- unsatisfactory (solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short)
- surrender natural rights in order to be safe from predation
Nietzsche decided we are mostly concerned with ? -also called -god is ? -world was destined to be ruled by ? problem with this ?
- self
- ethical egoism
- dead
- ubermensch “over men” not bound by slave morality
- must be concerned with self in society not just self
to function properly a democratic society needs a communication system that can ?
journalism is the basis upon which
- inform the public, investigate govt., challenge orthodoxy, and facilitate debate
- a public can govern itself
allegory of the cave: how long-standing ? and caution against relying on ? as well as complex and powerful influence of ?
- human search for truth is
- surface appearences
- culture on perceptions
Francis Bacon
-truth is ? but?
attainable but hard to find
Novum Organum: four barriers to true understanding -idol of the tribe: -idol of the cave: -idol of the marketplace: -idol of the theatre:
- humans tend to rely on perception and things get mixed up
- individuals tendency to misunderstand based on personal thoughts and opinions
- when people talk to each other info transfer is not perfect
- barriers to truth thrown up by various schools of thoughts
after WWI Walter Lippmann noted the massive ? referred to citizens as ? -recognize pitfalls of the ? challenge ? bench test ? -thought a lot like ? -also known as ?
- complexity of modern life
- deaf spectator at stage play
- idols, received info, ideas
- bacon
- journalistic objectivity
job of journalism is to provide citizens ina democracy the tools they need to make ?
- info is useless without ?
- goals of objectivity and context
- rational decisions about how to best govern their own lives
- context, shape, color, background
- work against each other
Lippman brought to light that journalism is not meant to ?
-in Public Opinion he wrote that journalism is a ?
- supply all the info
- search light
most serious problem in journalists quest for understanding was the rise of ?
Boorstin: the ?
blames journalists for
- contrived events
- pseudo event
- swallowing event whole and demanding more
pseudo events pose two serious problems:
- may not be
- may have
news
considerable news value
today news coverage is better than it was forty years ago -- -emphasizing - -journalists
- technology
- in depth stories
- internet
- better paid, better educated, more professional, better trained
why has faith fell in journalists
- people learned about the process of ?
- news cycle ?
- journalists under attack by ?
- tv shows ?
- owned by ?
- lump all news outlets into
- news gathering and came with contempt
- 24 hours
- politicians
- portray in bad light
- media conglomerates (bottom line mentality)
- monolith
improving the profession journalists -practiced principle of -were ? -worked for
- ethical journalism
- talented at their crafts
- strong news org.
correcting the record:
network news slower than ?
newspapers in adopting systematic way of correcting errors
ombudsmen
- who
- many experimented with them in?
- interest has been
- reader representatives or public editors
- 1960s and dropped in 80s and 90s
- rekindled
why some people don’t like ombudsmen
- barrier between ?
- some dont want to
- more common in
reader and journalism who should feel wrath
- spend money on in house critic
- canada and european
blogs police media in two ways
- challenge
- find ?
- validity of media reports
- bias in MSM
News councils in the US
- one method of voluntary reg. is common in europe and Canada but not US ?
- allow people who feel they have been wronged by media to ?
- News council
- file complaints often at no charge
positives and negatives of news councils
- improve journalism by ?
- may chill pursuit of controversial stories because
- what is also of concern
- punishing bad reporting and changing publics image of journalists
- by tying up reporters with complaints not allowed in court of law
- deciding who will be on them
who established first news council in 1918
swedes
the birth of the study of ethics:
socrates asking increasingly harder questions leading to basic truth ( socratic method)
