Focus: Lecture - Ethics, Codes and Conduct

On this week's lecture, we took a look at how codes and ethics work in the journalism industry. Recently, the industry is criticised as one of the most prominent press in UK, News of the World, was exposed with phone hacking scandals. People questioned their morality and their codes of conduct, whether they have ever respect other's privacy and try to be in a honest news industry. However, they failed to do it.

Now, back to the lecture. Our guest speaker Dr. John Harrison showed us a couple of advertisements including printed form and TV ads. Then he asked us about how ethical or unethical one advertisement seemed to us. Of course, different students has their different views, and so did I. While I found some of the ads are funny, they tend to do it in a rather poor or, may I say, inferior way. The creators of the advertisements like to catch our attention by using shocking content and suggestive material. But of course, not every advertisement is shown in prime time or 'kiddie time' where children watches TV after school or before school. So, there is an existence of the regulation board. Their work is to categorise each advertisement into their suitable on-air window. For printed posters and billboards, they don't have much control over them as everyone who travel past them will look at them. So there is a ethical question that ponders us. How can we tell everything from:

Good and bad?

Ethical or Unethical?

Right from Wrong?

Right, so in the lecture, John introduced 3 main ethical theories to us, which are 'Deontology', 'Consequentialism', and 'Virtue ethics'. And I am fairly intrigued by how consequentialism works.

Consequentialism is all about getting the right outcome, no matter how we did it, and by any means the outcome is the most important thing we should take care of, and 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. Believing how News of the World has followed these rules so closely, they've done something so shocking in a dishonouring and demeaning way, leading to their closure. So, should we just do what we want and don't care about the consequences? A good question to think of.

p.s.: I think John is using a bit too much BLOCK LETTER AND I FOUND IT A BIT CONFUSING TO FOLLOW!!



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