Media Ethics, Professionalism, Codes, and Accountability

Abstract

This chapter develops one of the key arguments of the book, namely that an ethical course of action for the media in contexts of conflict can only be properly charted if it is done collaboratively between media producers and media users. It is argued that understanding the ethics of conflict mediatization only in terms of professional codes is not imaginative or flexible enough to understand the media’s responsibilities and obligations to societies where there are wide disparities in media access, low levels of trust in media, and a history of state control of information. For media to engage ethically with democratization conflicts in these contexts, it is argued, it needs to conceive of ethics in ways that involve citizens more broadly and cut across social divides. This chapter examines the question of the relationship between media ethics, codes, and accountability to society in the light of these contextual challenges.