Lecture 5 - Introduction to Ethics

John Harrison visited our lecture this morning to talk to us about ethics. He started off by showing us different ads (billboards and TV) and had us position each of them on a grid with axes showing continuums for ethical - unethical and tacky - tasteful. I found this a very interesting exercise and noticed that I personally didn't rate many of the ads as unethical or perceived them as problematic. Having studied marketing at my home uni I know how ads that are neither offensive nor otherwise interest-sparking are most probably just a waste of money, time and effort since they won't generate much attention. Harrison confirmed that by telling us that advertisers sometimes push the boundaries deliberately to generate free publicity. A good example for highly ethical but revolting and disgusting ads are anti-smoking campaigns: in Switzerland, for example, every pack of cigarettes has to have a big photograph of a decaying smoker's lung or heart or similar on it.

While this is obviously pretty tasteless, it might only be through such drastic ads that they actually have any effect on smokers and generate any attention at all.
After this interactive start to the lecture we moved on to the theoretical part and discussed the three most common approaches to ethics:

-Deontology (from Greek deon = obligation, duty): something is ethical, if it complies with rules, principles and duties, for example with a code of ethics

-Teleology (from Greek telos = end) or Consequentialism: it is the right outcome that matters; the end justifies the means and it is about the greatest good for the greatest number

-Virtue: it is about good habits of character such as honesty, loyalty, courage; origins: Aristotle, Confucius

To round off the lecture, we talked a bit about what the duties (in a deontological sense) of a journalist are, which is, especially in the light of the NotW scandal, a very current and important question. I hope to learn more about this and other issues related to ethics in journalism during my studies here, as I think they are vital for anyone who aspires to be a decent journalist one day.