Open AccessMedia Representation of the Moment of Death: Dying Person’s Dignity in the Teaching of the Church and Journalistic Practice
Author(s) -
Tomasz Podlewski
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
perspektywy kultury
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2719-8014
pISSN - 2081-1446
DOI - 10.35765/pk.2021.3302.08
Subject(s) - dignity , relation (database) , journalism , construct (python library) , representation (politics) , content (measure theory) , sociology , content analysis , law , psychology , media studies , political science , social science , computer science , mathematics , mathematical analysis , database , politics , programming language
The author of the article poses the question repeatedly asked in the world of media, culture and science, concerning the limits of journalistic integrity and informational necessity in the media coverage of human death, especially in relation to how the moment of a tragic death and its immediate consequences are presented. He considers the teachings of the Church and John Paul II on the necessity of respecting human dignity in journalism, with particular focus on the dignity of the dying person, in addition to the respect towards the body of the deceased person. The author analyzes selected media messages with content of interest from the years 2017–2020, and referring to the reactions of some representatives of foreign media, he makes an attempt to construct a list of postulates for increasing the degree of sensitivity in the area of the discussed issues. In the preparation of this article, which is essentially a case study in journalistic ethics, the method of content analysis was used primarily in relation to the examined media presentations and the analytical‑synthetic method when it comes to extracting ethical guidelines from the analyzed texts and in constructing the conclusions.