Saturday, December 25, 2010
Sunday, February 22, 2009
ETHICAL DECENCY IN JOURNALISM IN RELATION TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
Introduction
It is generally accepted that a large company has a responsibility to the community in which it operates. Such responsibility includes being efficient so that it can continue to reward its shareholders and employees while making a substantial contribution to the nations’ economy and welfare. Going by a similar parlance, this philosophy can equally be applied to journalism in relation to its corporate social responsibility to the society at large.
Ethics generally deals with the minimum standards of appropriate conduct within a particular profession. This includes the duties which members of a particular profession owe to one another or to their subjects. Thus ethical decency in journalism is the ideal conduct or behaviour expected of a journalist both in speech and appearance as a minimum standard
Journalism like other professions has its own minimum standard behaviour or conduct that can be accepted within its ambits or scope. Talking about ethical decency in journalism we have in mind such areas like the mode of dressing, the choice of words, the quality of pictures being presented to the public and the general comportment of a journalist morally speaking. We are also talking about the type of scene being presented to the public and the type of approach given to it, using sympathy where it is needed, expressing shock or grief when necessary without causing undue embarrassment to the public. Thus a decent journalist is the person who maintains the professional standard of journalism applying his discretion and initiatives accordingly.
This paper is therefore a kind of an exposé of some areas of moral indecency noticeable among some journalists which creates some immoral and ugly sights to the general standard behaviour acceptable to the public taste.
MORAL ACTS OR WORDS THAT ARE OPPOSED TO DECENCY
Ordinarily, we understand the word decency from the verb to be decent meaning doing things in the respectable and suitable manner, being modest in behaviour without causing shock or embarrassment to people. Bryan (2004) defined it as the state of being proper, as in speech or dress. Morally speaking decency is the opposite of indecency which means an improper or obscene behaviour. Indecency is the state of being outrageously offensive especially in a vulgar or sexual way; indecency includes anything which is outrageously disgusting, be it in appearance, manner of behaviour or even in language. Thus we can talk about indecent advertising, indecent assault, indecent exhibition, indecent exposure, indecent dressing, indecent language etc.
A related word for indecency is obscenity. Both are often used with the same meaning though indecency is wider in scope. Obscenity is that which is offensive to chastity, this includes acts, utterances, or items (primarily publications and films) which are deemed contrary to public standards of sexual morality. Obscene items are often called pornography. Because public standards vary, any definition of obscenity is relative to the time and place in which it is formulated. For some authors, obscenity should not always been considered a public concern.
BRIEF HISTORY ON INDECENT PUBLICATIONS IN THE PAST
It was Sam Black (1989:10) who said while discussing issues management that:
any organization which does not have its head in
the sand must be sensitive to future trends and awake
to possible ways in which these trends may infringe on
the organization’s future success.
This is a kind of guiding against failures ahead. Historically speaking, in England, for example, until the early 1700s publishing sexually indecent material was not an offence. The U.S. has had obscenity laws since 1842. These laws have at times been stringent and their enforcement vigorous. To liberal thinkers, such laws were controversial and even misguided (by contemporary standards), as in the suppression of the Irish novelist James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses until 1933. In the 1950s the U.S. Supreme Court relaxed prohibitions on the sale, distribution, and possession of obscene materials. In 1973, however, it reversed its more liberal direction, and assigned the determination of what was obscene to the states, making “contemporary community standards” the key. These standards vary widely from place to place. In 1987 a deeply divided Court ruled that the social value of sexually explicit material must be judged from the standpoint of a “reasonable person,” rather than from community standards.
THE NIGERIAN SITUATION
In Nigerian situation, a similar reaction exists when it comes to public morality. Currently, a bill has been receiving attention in the National house of assembly against Nudity and indecent dressing. Even though reactions to the bill vary from person to person, from one cultural background to another, from one religious belief to the other, yet none of the critics has given kudos to those individuals who are guilty of this moral corruption. The Nigerian journalists have a standard code of ethics which aims at maintaining ethical standard in journalism among which decency is one of such codes of ethics. The code of ethics on the other hand sets out the moral considerations which must be observed by all in journalism in order to preserve human values and the integrity of free communication between peoples and nations(Okunna ).
MODE OF DRESSIING
A journalist should dress and comport himself in a manner that conforms with public taste (okunna:67).
The two major religions in Nigeria Christianity and Islam both condemn any act of indecent dressing in their holy books because such acts leads to other moral evils.
INDESCENT PUBLICATIONS
These include obscene pictures, films and cartoons, pornography etc.
1. Obscene pictures:
In the western countries, beginning with the July 1989 furor over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, 'The Perfect Moment,' photography continued to provoke heated debate over artistic freedom. The National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency that funds a wide range of cultural and artistic programs, was attacked by members of Congress and right-wing religious and political organizations for supporting art that some considered obscene or blasphemous (archive articles,1989).
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
2. Obscene films and cartoons:
It is generally accepted that a large company has a responsibility to the community in which it operates. Such responsibility includes being efficient so that it can continue to reward its shareholders and employees while making a substantial contribution to the nations’ economy and welfare. Going by a similar parlance, this philosophy can equally be applied to journalism in relation to its corporate social responsibility to the society at large.
Ethics generally deals with the minimum standards of appropriate conduct within a particular profession. This includes the duties which members of a particular profession owe to one another or to their subjects. Thus ethical decency in journalism is the ideal conduct or behaviour expected of a journalist both in speech and appearance as a minimum standard
Journalism like other professions has its own minimum standard behaviour or conduct that can be accepted within its ambits or scope. Talking about ethical decency in journalism we have in mind such areas like the mode of dressing, the choice of words, the quality of pictures being presented to the public and the general comportment of a journalist morally speaking. We are also talking about the type of scene being presented to the public and the type of approach given to it, using sympathy where it is needed, expressing shock or grief when necessary without causing undue embarrassment to the public. Thus a decent journalist is the person who maintains the professional standard of journalism applying his discretion and initiatives accordingly.
This paper is therefore a kind of an exposé of some areas of moral indecency noticeable among some journalists which creates some immoral and ugly sights to the general standard behaviour acceptable to the public taste.
MORAL ACTS OR WORDS THAT ARE OPPOSED TO DECENCY
Ordinarily, we understand the word decency from the verb to be decent meaning doing things in the respectable and suitable manner, being modest in behaviour without causing shock or embarrassment to people. Bryan (2004) defined it as the state of being proper, as in speech or dress. Morally speaking decency is the opposite of indecency which means an improper or obscene behaviour. Indecency is the state of being outrageously offensive especially in a vulgar or sexual way; indecency includes anything which is outrageously disgusting, be it in appearance, manner of behaviour or even in language. Thus we can talk about indecent advertising, indecent assault, indecent exhibition, indecent exposure, indecent dressing, indecent language etc.
A related word for indecency is obscenity. Both are often used with the same meaning though indecency is wider in scope. Obscenity is that which is offensive to chastity, this includes acts, utterances, or items (primarily publications and films) which are deemed contrary to public standards of sexual morality. Obscene items are often called pornography. Because public standards vary, any definition of obscenity is relative to the time and place in which it is formulated. For some authors, obscenity should not always been considered a public concern.
BRIEF HISTORY ON INDECENT PUBLICATIONS IN THE PAST
It was Sam Black (1989:10) who said while discussing issues management that:
any organization which does not have its head in
the sand must be sensitive to future trends and awake
to possible ways in which these trends may infringe on
the organization’s future success.
This is a kind of guiding against failures ahead. Historically speaking, in England, for example, until the early 1700s publishing sexually indecent material was not an offence. The U.S. has had obscenity laws since 1842. These laws have at times been stringent and their enforcement vigorous. To liberal thinkers, such laws were controversial and even misguided (by contemporary standards), as in the suppression of the Irish novelist James Joyce's literary masterpiece Ulysses until 1933. In the 1950s the U.S. Supreme Court relaxed prohibitions on the sale, distribution, and possession of obscene materials. In 1973, however, it reversed its more liberal direction, and assigned the determination of what was obscene to the states, making “contemporary community standards” the key. These standards vary widely from place to place. In 1987 a deeply divided Court ruled that the social value of sexually explicit material must be judged from the standpoint of a “reasonable person,” rather than from community standards.
THE NIGERIAN SITUATION
In Nigerian situation, a similar reaction exists when it comes to public morality. Currently, a bill has been receiving attention in the National house of assembly against Nudity and indecent dressing. Even though reactions to the bill vary from person to person, from one cultural background to another, from one religious belief to the other, yet none of the critics has given kudos to those individuals who are guilty of this moral corruption. The Nigerian journalists have a standard code of ethics which aims at maintaining ethical standard in journalism among which decency is one of such codes of ethics. The code of ethics on the other hand sets out the moral considerations which must be observed by all in journalism in order to preserve human values and the integrity of free communication between peoples and nations(Okunna ).
MODE OF DRESSIING
A journalist should dress and comport himself in a manner that conforms with public taste (okunna:67).
The two major religions in Nigeria Christianity and Islam both condemn any act of indecent dressing in their holy books because such acts leads to other moral evils.
INDESCENT PUBLICATIONS
These include obscene pictures, films and cartoons, pornography etc.
1. Obscene pictures:
In the western countries, beginning with the July 1989 furor over the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition, 'The Perfect Moment,' photography continued to provoke heated debate over artistic freedom. The National Endowment for the Arts, a U.S. government agency that funds a wide range of cultural and artistic programs, was attacked by members of Congress and right-wing religious and political organizations for supporting art that some considered obscene or blasphemous (archive articles,1989).
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2008. © 1993-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
2. Obscene films and cartoons:
Thursday, December 11, 2008
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