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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

What is Journalism and Media Ethics

by Subramaniam Vincent, director of Journalism and Media Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
The news landscape worldwide continues to change substantially due to Internet search, social media, online advertising markets, and news apps. The Journalism and Media Ethics program engages with stakeholders across various news media occupations to tackle ethical dilemmas that have far-reaching implications. The program runs initiatives and activities that advance the following aims:
  • Giving journalists, producers, product managers, and newsroom leaders the crucial background to proactively identify dilemmas and analyze normative questions using frameworks. 
  • Offering recommendations, principles, consulting, and training for producing and elevating ethical journalism in this complex and challenging landscape. 
  • Using ethical principles to frame the design and delivery of news on social media, search, and generative AI products.
  • Engaging with the public on shaping and understanding ethical journalism and digital media.

Reporters and large crowd of people.

About the Journalism and Media Ethics Program

The end of traditional "gatekeeping" has signaled a seismic shift in how narratives are framed, developed, distributed, socialized, and discussed. For some communities, this is troubling because it threatens a longstanding social order. For others, particularly those who have been ignored or sidelined by traditional gatekeepers, this is a tremendous moment of opportunity for greater inclusion. At the same time, journalism's financial sustainability continues to be in doubt.

Too often, the hardest and interdisciplinary problems with ethical implications are being identified only after editorial, business, and technology decisions have been incorporated into products and narratives. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is uniquely well-positioned to provide ethical frameworks to help stakeholders proactively identify and analyze normative questions from the early stages to later in delivery cycles, while at the same time enriching the ongoing debates in these spheres.

We are dedicated to helping media producers, journalists, product designers, members of the public, and critics develop ways to address pressing -- and persistent -- ethical dilemmas that continue to have wide-reaching consequences for us all. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics is uniquely well-positioned to provide ethical frameworks to help stakeholders proactively identify and analyze normative questions from the early stages to later in delivery cycles, while at the same time enriching the ongoing debates in these spheres.

We are excited to supply a more comprehensive approach to applied journalism and media ethics. We are dedicated to helping media producers, journalists, product designers, members of the public, and critics develop ways to address pressing -- and persistent -- ethical dilemmas that continue to have wide-reaching consequences for us all.

Oct 10, 2023
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