Media Ethics and Law: Together, but Unequal

trying to track the authors’ arguments across contexts and continents in order to make sense of what issues are applicable to where. The chapter on shield laws is especially problematic in this regard and inadvertently serves to suggest the incompatibility of blending ethical and legal discussions (and, perhaps, global approaches to ethics). For my liking, the authors tended to err too much on the “ethical dilemmas” side of the ethics equation, and broader issues about the roles and responsibilities of journalism as an institution tended to play second fiddle to meanderings around “what to do when faced with x?” The last chapter provides as thorough a framework for a decision-making process as I have seen in any ethics text, yet it is curiously light on ethics theory. This is all the more disappointing as the earlier chapters make a forceful case for theory as “an important foundation for journalists and journalism students” (p. 7) and the fascinating—and, for me, wholly sound—dialectic approach seems an afterthought. There is thus something of a disconnect between how the book begins and how it ends. It seems to me that there are probably two separate works at play in this text; the first, an examination of the contribution of (Marxist) historical materialism to journalism ethics and, second, a text helping journalism students and professionals navigate ethical dilemmas. Separately, they would be strong works (the first would contribute substantively to normative theory). Together, however, we seem to get the best of neither. That said, this text is engagingly written and thorough. It would appeal to students and professionals. The global approach is to be commended for its ambition, even if it raises some problems. Overall, however, I was left wishing that the critical edge introduced early in the book had been forcefully maintained throughout. For this reviewer, this was a missed opportunity.