A European View of Media Ethics
The Other Two Aims of Media Ethics
by Claude-Jean Bertrand
Among the best known M.A.S' are correction boxes, ombudsmen, journalism reviews and press councils. Among the least acknowledged: readership surveys, awareness programs, higher education and non-profit research. Among the least used: in-house critics, ethical audits and associations of media consumers.
M.A.S. aim at eradicating the sins that journalists commit. Sure.
But there's a danger there. Journalists commit lots of visible little sins but the worst sins by far are committed by the media. Ethics should not be used to turn news people into scapegoats. On the contrary, it should assist the journalistic profession in fighting media sins, in countering attacks on the freedom and the quality of the press.
That is why I believe that the main purpose of M.A.S. is to rebuild public trust in the news media, which is low everywhere and getting lower. Most M.A.S. are means for journalists to listen to the public and to work with it in order to improve services.
Do you doubt the capacity of the public to improve the press? Just think of the early 1980's when the French public pressured the newly elected socialist government into lifting the old State monopoly on broadcasting (which right wing governments over the previous 23 years had refused to abolish): that liberation superbly improved radio and television news.
The profession needs to recover and increase the trust of the public, by listening to it and rendering accounts to it. Then journalists will be able to mobilize millions of voters and consumers - and fight their opponents, political and economic, with a good chance of winning.
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Claude-Jean Bertrand is emeritus professor at the French Press Institute at the University of Paris 2. He has recently written a book about Media Accountability Systems: Media Ethics and Accountability Systems, New Brunswick (NJ) & London, Transaction, 2000 - 164 pages – ISBN. He also edited An Arsenal For Democracy: Media Accountability Systems , Cresskill (NJ), Hampton Press, Fall 2001.
You can contact him directly at cjbertrand@noos.fr
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