Determining Right From Wrong
Ethics is determining right from wrong. Everyone has their own opinion about what is right and what is wrong; this makes the decision of whether or not something is ethical in the media hard to call. Ethics have to do more so with personal beliefs. Just because something is legal does not mean that it is ethical.
The history of media ethics primarily dealt with scandals, controversies, and the different understandings of media ethics. Throughout history, most controversies occurred during specified periods. The periods were known as the following: the print era, the electronic era, and the digital era. We are currently living in the digital era.
The print era occurred during the 15th century after the printing press had been invented. Inventing the printing press led to the mass production of bibles. Anything that was printed had to support the royalty’s opinion. If the literature was not in favor of the royal opinion it was considered to be unethical.
The Electric Era was the second controversy period. This was the time when technology had been put onto the market. We had television and radio, but we needed something to put on the air. Sex and violence is very entertaining, but is often considered to be unethical to put those types of programs on the air. Rating systems were put into play to help determine what was ethical and what was not.
The Digital Era is what we are living in today. With the invention of the internet came a lot of controversies. We now have access to just about anything that you can think of at our fingertips. One controversy that arose was, is it ethical for the internet to have sex, hate, violence and so forth on the internet? There is no limit to what you can view on the internet. The internet has provided the public with things that we like and things that we hate. You have to take the good with bad. The websites can’t all be good. If you don’t like something, here’s an idea, don’t look at it! Everyone has their own idea of what is ethical and what is not ethical. Respect other people’s right to express themselves. If you don’t like something that is being presented to you then don’t look/listen.
The media does try to control what is ethical for the general public to watch/listen/read. Councils try to objectively observe the media performance, this helps to ensure ethnicity. One person’s opinion could be completely different from another person’s opinion and that makes media ethics a little fuzzy and hard to make judgments on ethnicity of programs. No one can really ensure ethnicity.
