All four major systems of ethical reasoning – character
ethics, duty ethics, consequence ethics, and relationship ethics – have both
positive and negative aspects. However, if I were to pick one ethical system
for the media, my vote would go to consequence ethics, which includes
utilitarianism and social justice. The basic premise of consequence ethics is that “our actions matter and must be taken into account as we make
ethical decisions”.
Utilitarianism aims
to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people
The basic theory of this ethical system is that the right
action is the one that does the most good for the most possible people. While
the theory tries to benefit the greatest number of people possible, this
naturally means that there will be a smaller group of people who
suffer at the
expense of the greater good. An example that the book uses to illustrate this
is scientific research. Researchers are willing to harm or kill a small number
of animals in order to find a cure for a disease like cancer. In the end,
finding a cure for something as important as cancer is much more beneficial for
the population than the lives of the animals who were tested on. For many
people, the fact that there will always be a group that is disadvantaged by the
greater good is a problem with utilitarianism. People think that we can never be completely sure about
the consequences of our actions. It is extremely difficult to apply value to
something like time or a life. However, I believe that this aspect of
consequence is beneficial to the media and is part of the reason why I picked
the consequence ethical system. The book discusses the relation of
utilitarianism to media. An example of this is how the media may report a
government wrongdoing, which will benefit the Americans in general because we
will be more informed about what is going on in our government. However, it may
result in somebody in the government losing their job or going to jail. I
believe this theory is important because it attempts to do the greatest good
for the largest amount of people possible. While it is true that it will harm
others along the way, that number is not as significant as the amount of people
it is benefitting. There will always be somebody who isn’t happy, so making an
ethical decision by helping the largest amount of people makes sense.
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| In the photo above is John Stuart Mill, an influential contributor on utilitarianism |
Social marketing is a
part of utilitarianism that attempts to change behavior
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| This is an example of one of the ads that was part of the CDC anti-smoking campaign |
Social marketing is a part of utilitarianism that uses
advertising and marketing techniques for social causes that attempt to do the
greatest good for the greatest number of people by changing their behaviors.
This is especially related to the media as they are the ones who would be
creating campaigns and conveying the message to people to change their
behavior. I think this is very favorable because it has the ability to help
millions of people with little to no negative impact on others. Safe sex
campaigns will hopefully educated people about preventing STDs and unplanned
pregnancies, so there are clear benefits. However, unlike other examples of
utilitarianism, there are virtually no consequences that can harm someone. An
example to support consequence ethics is the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) anti-smoking campaign, which is an illustration of social marketing. The campaign showed real people
talking about their personal health consequences as a result of smoking. These
consequences ranged from throat cancer to strokes and heart attacks. After the
campaign ran ads for 12 weeks in the spring of 2012, a study was conducted. The results showed that these ads helped persuade more than 10,000 Americans to quit smoking. This shows how social marketing is an extremely useful tool that conveys the consequences of a negative action like smoking in order to help the greater good.
Social justice plays
off of utilitarianism beliefs
In the theory of social justice, philosophers believe that
the greatest good that was discussed in utilitarianism is what brings “the most
fairness for everyone”. Like in utilitarianism, the main problem with this is
defining what exactly is fair. In order to follow this theory, a person
essentially needs to take a step back and view the situation they are in from
the other person’s perspective. In an example related to media, an advertising
executive may be running an ad that is offensive to another ethnic group. If
this executive took social justice into consideration, they would put
themselves in the shoes of that ethnic group and realize that their ad is
offensive, and make the necessary changes to ensure it is fair for everyone. This
can be applied to many other media situations, like a journalist changing their
story after thinking about how they would feel if it was written about them. I
think social justice helps illustrate why the consequence ethical system is the
most important because it shows how we can make the media the most fair.
While all ethical systems have their respective plusses and
minuses, I feel that by bringing the fairest treatment for the greatest number
of people to the media, the combination of utilitarianism and social justice
makes the consequence system the most attractive.
I thought Olivia’s title was strong, but would have liked to see her add something about the context of media to the title. Since her blog post discusses which ethics system is best for media and uses media examples, including it in the title would have given more insight into the information contained within the post.
ReplyDeleteThe content of the blog was well written and easy to read and understand. Olivia presented clear reasoning for why she believes consequence ethics is the best to use when making decisions in media production. I was able to understand what consequence ethics is, including its incorporation of utilitarianism (doing the most good for the most people) and of social justice (applying utilitarianism to advertising for social change) and how these can be applied to making ethical decisions in media production. Olivia supports each of the points she makes with specific examples drawn from the text, demonstrating how this ethics system could be applied to the media. I think providing her own examples would have strengthened the blog post even further. The subtitles were also helpful in breaking up the content and providing overviews of the main points of the post. Perhaps breaking up the paragraphs beneath the subheads would have made the material even easier to read. I thought the fact that Olivia addressed some of the potential shortcomings of consequence ethics while still explaining why she feels it is the best system really strengthened her argument by showing that she has thought through both the positives and negatives. The links she provided were great resources for understanding the post even better, although the first link was to our textbook and would be difficult for anyone outside of the class to use since they most likely would not have purchased access to the textbook.
I found a good discussion of utilitarianism that deliberates another potential problem with the ethical system. It talks about the ability of utilitarianism to result in an “ends justify the means” mentality, or that as long as the best outcome for the most people occurs, the means to getting there are not as important. I think this plays a role in media ethics when lying or other seemingly unethical behavior is used to achieve a better end result. It can be argued that the end justifies the means in some cases, but in others in may seem to fall short as an ethical system by allowing people to practice ethically questionable behavior to achieve the end result. This would have been a good addition to the discussion of potential negative aspects of the system. http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4224805/
Olivia's title is explanatory, but very broad. Maybe next time she should use some sort of specific in the title and catch the reader's attention better. Her use of embedded links was good except for her first one. In order to view the first embedded link, you have to pay for the online book for this class and that does not help people that do not have it online or want to pay. The bolded sub-headlines are not very explanatory in how she will divulge the information such as "what greater good" from utilitarianism in the second paragraph. Her paragraphs are also a little too long for the normal online reader so if she can break her paragraphs up a little, it might look a little cleaner and appealing to the reader. She did, however, incorporate photos correctly into her post.
ReplyDeleteAside from those little details in a post, she did provide great research on the topic at hand. The examples she used (anti-smoking ad campaign) really made it easy to comprehend what exactly her post was about. Thanks to her research, I can agree with her about the positives and negatives in ethical systems in media along with the use of utilitarianism and social justice to make things better.
Going along with the social marketing part of her post, I found an interesting article about how Roozt.com is starting a new social change simply through shopping online on their website. "A Movement to Roozt as a Pinboard is to Pinterest, except Movements are shoppable inside the Roozt experience." This new feature donates $1 for every purchase made to the specific cause/charity involved with the items you buy in a Movement. Things like this Roozt.com experience or trying to persuade people to change how they think and feel is such a big part of how we market these days. The ever growing social movements and use of media (especially social) is vital to changing behaviors of people and the ethics involved is the best way in my opinion as well for the consequence system.
http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/36360-Roozt-com-Unveils-Movements-a-New-User-Experience-for-Online-Shoppers-to-Create-Social-Change