A Transformative Vision of the Media

It has been almost 20 years since the game-changing book Good News (Christians, Ferré, & Fackler, 1993) shifted the conversation in media ethics from the conduct of individual journalists to the shared responsibilities of journalists in relation to their communities. Laying out for the first time a communitarian vision for journalism, the authors of Good News argued for a third way between collectivism and individualism, between local and global, between situated moral propositions and authoritative abstract principles. Their landmark work went on to inform debates about the public/civic journalism movement (see, e.g., Black, 1997) and to inspire a generation of media ethics scholars (myself included) to generate critiques, refinements, and alternatives to their communitarian theory (e.g., Borden, 2009; Coleman, 2000; Plaisance, 2005). In the meantime, the authors themselves have continued to develop their framework, teasing out its implications for normative press theories, citizen participation, media accountability, and global understanding (e.g., Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White, 2009; Christians & Traber, 1997; Fortner & Fackler, 2010).