Media Ethics Issues and Cases Chapter 2

Information Ethics: A Profession Seeks the Truth

"Nothing is what it seems."

Like The Matrix, nothing is what it seems when it comes to truth and objectivity in the news. Chapter two delves deeper into the profession providing content on different kinds of truth and each of their relationship with and interaction in the news media. To explain the different views of truth I thought it would be easiest to use a concrete example. Here is a picture of my two good friends, Hunter and Kaitey (from Left), and my twin sister, Christine, in Disney World's Magic Kingdom.

1. Pre-Socratic Greek View of Truth: looking at the picture through the pre-Socratic lens would be nearly impossible. This view of truth depended heavily on memory because of the oral culture that existed as a way to pass down information from generation to generation. I suppose that to view this picture in a pre-Socratic way I would have to memorize the colors and the background and the expressions on their faces, I would be able to call to memory the moment when I took this picture and how Kaitey's arms held them all together, bringing them closer to one another beneath a landmark of our childhood. "This oral notion of truth was gradually discarded once words and ideas were written down", it was replaced with Seeing is Believing which makes it much easier to find truth in an image such as this.
2. Plato's View of Truth: Plato linked truth closely with human rationality and intellect. "Plato equated truth with a world of pure form, a world to which human beings had only indirect access." So in Plato's true or pure world there would not be a White man staring at a map in the right of this picture, or another White man with a tripod on the left. There may even be more of a diverse racial demographic represented in this picture. My friends would be directly centered in front of Cinderella's Castle and the sky would be a little brighter. The truth of this photo, just like the truth in Plato's cave is knowable only to the human intellect and can not be verified.
3. Enlightenment Concept of Truth: This view of truth is linked to the senses. "Truth has become increasingly tied to what is written down, what can be empirically verified, what can be perceived by the senses." This concept of truth calls 'Objectivity' into the equation. Objectivity relies on facts and knowledge and requires that the writer separates fact from opinion. So, while taking this picture I remember hearing Christine's short loud laughter as she opened her mouth, I remember seeing the purple flowers behind them and noticing how they complimented Kaitey's shorts. I remember Smelling sweet pastries from a near-by bakery on Main Street. These things are true, in the Enlightenment view, because they were derived from my senses and they are also true because the majority of the people in this picture also saw the flowers and heard the laughter and smelt the sweet treats, my truth was widely universal. If I had said 'In this picture it looks like my friends are happiness imposters, they are only smiling for the camera" that would be an opinion. I do not know how truly happy they were here regardless of what the picture looks like.
4. The Pragmatic View of Truth:  Truth in the Enlightenment view was determined in only one way- through the senses. In the Pragmatic view, truth became more individual and less universal. Pragmatism challenged Objectivity. If this image were viewed through a pragmatic lens, It would be viewed as a specific situation and the context of the picture would have a great deal to do with the way it was interpreted. I could say that Kaitey did not get a good nights sleep the night before and was feeling exhausted; and Christine had, one day earlier, competed well in a Track and Field Regionals Race; and Hunter was feeling bittersweet because her three closest friends were going to college soon. Hearing these subjective facts changes the way one looks at the image. Do I, as a writer, even have the authority to report on something because the truth of a matter is so subjective?
5. Postmodern View of Truth: This Postmodern Philosophy is a "logical extension" of Pragmatism, it states that meaning and truth can not exist apart from context. This picture would not even exist, or at least be considered truth, without the context it is taken in.
6. The Convergence Theory of Truth: This theory states that truth is discovered through many different methods of investigation that would make up an overall mental idea of the events that took place. If this picture were to be used in Convergence Journalism, It may be featured in an article that described the setting and the weather, it may state who the girls in the photograph are and why they are in Disney World. There may be an eye-witness account of the picture being taken displayed in the article through a series of quotations or displayed in an audio format that can be listened to by the audience. There may even be a picture of me taking the picture, or an infographic with information on how many people a day take a similar picture in front of Cinderella's castle. All of these sounds, images, and words are methods of understanding the truth depicted above.

The chapter talks about how news media must be "neutral, yet investigative. It must be disengaged, but have an impact. It must be fair-minded but have an edge." This refers to the way that the information is being framed and plays a huge role in the audiences response to the news. The ethical news values set out at the end of the chapter focus on Journalism's commitment to the truth and outline specific ethical practices. My favorite of the values is Reciprocity, that is "treating others as you wish to be treated" in the IRE survey of journalists I was surprised to hear how hypocritical the journalists were, willing to falsify or withhold information but unwilling to accept when that happened to them. Reciprocity focuses on the readers relationship with the writer as one of mutual respect.