Media Ethics

As with professional ethics as a whole, media ethics is divided into three parts: metaethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics. Metaethics addresses the validity of theories, the nature of good and evil in media programming, the question of universals, problems of relativism, and the rationale for morality in a secular age. Normative ethics fuses practice with principles. It concerns the best ways for professionals to lead their lives and the standards to be promoted. Normative ethics concentrates on the justice or injustice of societies and institutions. Descriptive ethics uses social science methodologies to report on how ethical decision making actually works in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment. Normative ethics has received the most attention in media ethics, but for media ethics to flourish, research and teaching need to be strong on all three levels.