Media Ethics

Media ethics concerns moral issues in journalism, news media, film, television and entertainment. It examines how to apply ethical principles like honesty, accuracy, impartiality, fairness, harm avoidance, and privacy in these domains. Key issues include:

• Truth and accuracy: The media has a duty to report news truthfully and factually. Inaccurate or false reporting violates public trust and can cause harm. Anonymous or unverified sources should be avoided. Opinions/analysis should be backed by evidence and clearly distinguished from news.
• Impartiality and fairness: The media should present issues and viewpoints without bias or distortion. Represent multiple sides fairly when covering controversial topics. Avoid conflicts of interest and preferential treatment. Criticism of public figures should be proportional and relevant to their role.
• Privacy vs public interest: The media must balance an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy with the public’s right to information that significantly impacts them. Public figures have a lower expectation of privacy, but media should avoid excessively prying into people’s private lives when it’s not clearly relevant.
• Harm and offense: The media should avoid inciting discrimination, violence or illegal activities. While free speech is crucial, it needs to be balanced with harms of hate speech and radicalization. Graphic or offensive content requires warnings to allow audience choice. Reporting on threats could encourage copycats.
• Consent and deception: In general, the media should not report on individuals or record/photograph them without consent. Undercover investigation and deception may be justified to expose wrongdoing or dangers, but other reporting should be transparent. Stakeholders should be given a chance to respond.
• Commercial pressure vs integrity: Commercial and business interests of media companies should not undermine journalistic ethics. “Clickbait” and sensationalism distort reporting of serious issues. While profitability matters, it should not be the primary goal. Maintaining independence and integrity is key.

Ethics of Journalism

1. Accuracy and fact-based communications
   • Journalists cannot always guarantee ‘truth’ but getting the facts right is the cardinal principle of journalism.
   • Journalists should always strive for accuracy, give all relevant facts and ensure that they have been checked.
2. Independence
   • Journalists must be independent voices; they should not act, formally or informally, on behalf of special interests whether political, corporate or cultural.
   • They should declare to their editors – or directly to the audience – any relevant information about political affiliations, financial arrangements or other personal connections that might constitute a conflict of interest.
3. Fairness and Impartiality
   • Most stories have at least two sides. While there is no obligation to present every side in every piece, the stories produced by journalists should strive for balance and provide context.
   • Objectivity is not always possible and may not always be desirable (in the face, for example, of clear and undeniable brutality or inhumanity), but impartial reporting builds trust and confidence.
4. Humanity
   • Journalists should do no harm. They should show sensitivity and care in their work recognising that what they publish, or broadcast may be hurtful.
   • It is not possible to report freely and in the public interest without occasionally causing hurt and offence, but journalists should always be aware of the impact of words and images on the lives of others. This is particularly important when reporting on minorities, children, the victims of violence, and vulnerable people.
5. Accountability and Transparency
   • A key principle of responsible journalism is the ability to be accountable.
   • Journalists should always be open and transparent in their work except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. When they make mistakes, they must correct them, and expressions of regret must be sincere. They listen to their audience and provide remedies to those dealt with unfairly.

Philosophers like Peter Singer argue media ethics requires impartial reasoning and reflection on consequences – considering harms and benefits of reporting on vulnerable groups, privacy, free speech; balancing multiple principles. Issues often depend heavily on context, so rules provide general guidance but judgment is required in each case.

TRP and Media ethics

• Television rating point: TRP stands for Television Rating Point. It is the tool that tells us which channel and the program are viewed most or it indicates the popularity of a TV channel or a program. It shows how many times people are watching a channel or a particular program.

Ethical Issues Related to TRP

• Race for TRP is sensationalizing news reporting.
• Sensationalism aims at maximising viewership and earning profit. This makes news reporting vulnerable to manipulation.
• Objectivity in presenting the news is extremely important to fulfil the ‘right to information’ of people. People have right to get information in the authentic, unbiased form. 
• Hence, it is important to maintain the ‘integrity of the process’ of news collection and broadcast.
• The government’s advertising expenditure depends on the TRP system, and public spending should not be based on flawed data.
• TRP system compromise the impartial news selection. Issues of vulnerable, poor and marginal section of our society gets side lined.
• Race for TRP also forces news channel to show unscientific, unverified information that compromise on the larger role of media to develop value laden society,   

Targeting TRP in journalism is destroying professional journalism and citizen-centric journalism. Reporting is being displaced by Agenda Setting Theory. Noise is replacing information dissemination. This reminds us of what Noam Chomsky one asked, “How it is we have so much information but know so little?”