Premium
Journalists: a moral law unto themselves?
Author(s) -
HARRIS NIGEL G. E.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5930.1990.tb00255.x
Subject(s) - duty , government (linguistics) , journalism , law , sociology , value (mathematics) , identity (music) , political science , law and economics , philosophy , linguistics , machine learning , computer science , aesthetics
Journalists often take themselves as having a moral duty to protect their sources. If the sources in question leak information from government departments, government ministers will consider themselves as having the moral right to demand that the journalists disclose the identity of those sources. This creates conflicts of value between what journalists and ministers consider to be right. It is argued not only that traditional moral theories cannot resolve such moral conflicts, but that they are in a sense a good thing. A world in which the conflicts occur may be considered to be better than one in which they are prevented from occurring, for one can expect to have both effective journalism and effective government only in the former. The most important consequence of this view is that it makes the professional ethics of journalism (and, by implication, those of other professions) into something more than the mere application of universal moral rules to the various situations in which those who work in the profession are liable to find themselves.