The landscape in which journalists now work is substantially different to that of the twentieth century. The rise of digital and social media necessitates a new way of considering the ethical questions facing practicing journalists. This volume considers the various individual, cultural and institutional influences that have an impact on journalistic ethics today. It also examines the links between ethics and professionalism, the organizational promotion of ethical values and the tensions between ethics, freedom of information and speech, and the need (...) to disseminate information. By comparing the theoretical underpinnings of journalistic ethics with a variety of international case studies, this volume provides a comparative global analysis of the ethical challenges faced by the media in the twenty-first century. It will be essential reading for students of journalism and practicing journalists. (shrink)

This pedagogical essay explores the tendency of undergraduate media ethics students to do what Bernard Gert calls “morality by slogans” and their tendency to misuse Aristotle's golden mean slogan. While not solving the dilemma of morality by slogans, the essay suggests some ways of rectifying the misuse of the golden mean and encouraging its more authentic application.

The proliferation of news and information sources has motivated a need to identify those providing legitimate journalism. One temptation is to go the route of such fields as medicine and law, namely to formally professionalize. This gives a clear method for determining who is a member, with an array of associated responsibilities and rewards. We argue that making such a formal move in journalism is a mistake: Journalism does not meet the traditional criteria, and its core ethos is in conflict (...) with the professional mindset. We thus shift the focus from whether the person is journalist to whether the work satisfies the conditions that characterize legitimate journalism. In explaining those conditions we also look at mechanisms for enhancing the power of persons doing journalism, drawing upon lessons from the labor movement. We also consider a self-declaration model while urging increased literacy from all participants in the news gathering and consuming enterprise. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 159-161, April-June.

ABSTRACT The recent revival of interest in theory leads the writers to examine a particular moment when a curriculum and the institution in which it occurred was explained and justified. Max Horkheimer's inaugural address to the Institute for Social Research in 1931 is summarised. The points made by the new Director of the Institute are examined in relation not only to his proposal for an inter‐disciplinary curriculum, but also to the nature of the institution and to the general justification of (...) higher education. The article concludes with a number of comments on the relevance of these proposals to some modern higher education issues. (shrink)

On the morning of May 26, 2004, New York Times readers found a note from the paper’s editors on Page A10. The headline read “From the Editors—The Times and Iraq,” and the 1,000-word article that followed served as a disclosure that the Times had failed in its duty of both aggressive information gathering and careful reporting with a critical eye. Response to the note was fast and widespread as newspeople across the country commented on the paper’s public admission of its (...) flawed coverage. The editors’ note, together with the responses it generated, provides a glimpse into the state of American journalism and the way those enmeshed in it understand and expect the practice to operate. Beyond serving a descriptive purpose, however, the texts can be used to start a discourse in the normative realm, to offer suggestions for how our understanding of journalism perhaps ought to change to better reflect the reality of what is truly a human institution. This paper provides both a descriptive and normative analysis of themes that emerge from the case, and it prompts both journalists and citizens to reflect on the practice and then continue moving forward through a landscape in constant flux. (shrink)

Trigger warnings captured national attention in 2014 when students from several U.S. universities called for inclusion of the warnings on course syllabi and in classrooms. Opinions spread through news outlets across the spectrum, and those weighing in were quick to pronounce trigger warnings as either unnecessary coddling and an affront to free speech, or as a responsible pedagogical practice that treats students with respect and minimizes harm. Put simply, the debate about trigger warnings has followed the trajectory of many debates (...) in the public sphere: The issue has largely been framed by highly committed opponents and proponents whose positions represent the extremes of the spectrum. Lost has been the nuance that an issue like trigger warnings necessarily requires. This article examines trigger warnings—particularly the call for trigger warnings on university campuses—from a pluralistic ethical perspective and addresses the question: When, if ever, are trigger warnings ethically appropriate? (shrink)

Trigger warnings captured national attention in 2014 when students from several U.S. universities called for inclusion of the warnings on course syllabi and in classrooms. Opinions spread through news outlets across the spectrum, and those weighing in were quick to pronounce trigger warnings as either unnecessary coddling and an affront to free speech, or as a responsible pedagogical practice that treats students with respect and minimizes harm. Put simply, the debate about trigger warnings has followed the trajectory of many debates (...) in the public sphere: The issue has largely been framed by highly committed opponents and proponents whose positions represent the extremes of the spectrum. Lost has been the nuance that an issue like trigger warnings necessarily requires. This article examines trigger warnings—particularly the call for trigger warnings on university campuses—from a pluralistic ethical perspective and addresses the question: When, if ever, are trigger warnings ethically appropriate? (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 1, Page 64-66, January-March.

On one hand, Chinese consumers are well known for conspicuous consumption and the adoption of luxury products and named brands. On the other hand, they also have a bad reputation for buying counterfeit products. Their simultaneous preferences for two contrasting types of product present a paradox that has not been addressed in the literature. This study attempts to present an explanation of this paradox by examining the effects of traditional Chinese cultural values and consumer values on consumers’ deontological judgment of (...) pirated CDs and the amount of social benefits they perceive they gain from them. We interviewed 300 Hong Kong Chinese consumers, and found that face consciousness increased materialism and risk aversion, thereby producing a favorable deontological judgment of pirated CDs. Face consciousness also has a direct effect on the amount of social benefits perceived in pirated CDs. Both favorable deontological judgment and perceived social benefits contributed to a strong intention to buy pirated CDs. The results are discussed in a cultural perspective. (shrink)

Corporate community involvement is often regarded as means of development in developing countries. However, CCI is often criticised for patronage and insensitivity both to context and local priorities. A key concern is the extent of 'community participation' in corporate social decision-making. Community participation in CCI offers an opportunity for these criticisms to be addressed. This paper presents findings of research examining community participation in CCI governance undertaken by Magadi Soda Company in Kenya. We draw on socio-political governance and interaction theories (...) to examine the institutionalisation of participatory decision-making and its impact on changing governing roles and social action in CCI over time. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In this paper we give relational semantics and an accompanying relational proof theory for full Lambek calculus (a sequent calculus which we denote by FL). We start with the Kripke semantics for FL as discussed in [11] and develop a second Kripke-style semantics, RelKripke semantics, as a bridge to relational semantics. The RelKripke semantics consists of a set with two distinguished elements, two ternary relations and a list of conditions on the relations. It is accompanied by a Kripke-style valuation system (...) analogous to that in [11]. Soundness and completeness theorems with respect to FL hold for RelKripke models. Then, in the spirit of the work of Orlowska [14], [15], and Buszkowski and Orlowska [3], we develop relational logic RFL. The adjective relational is used to emphasize the fact that RFL has a semantics wherein formulas are interpreted as relations. We prove that a sequent Γ → α in FL is provable if and only if a translation, t( $\gamma_1 \bullet \cdots \bullet \gamma_n \supset \alpha)\varepsilon \upsilon u$ , has a cut-complete fundamental proof tree. This result is constructive: that is, if a cut-complete proof tree for $t(\gamma_1 \bullet \cdots \bullet \gamma_n \supset \alpha)\varepsilon \upsilon u$ is not fundamental, we can use the failed proof search to build a relational countermodel for $t(\gamma_1 \bullet \cdots \bullet \gamma_n \supset \alpha)\varepsilon \upsilon u$ and from this, build a RelKripke countermodel for $\gamma_1 \bullet \cdots \bullet \gamma_n \supset \alpha$ . These results allow us to add FL, the basic substructural logic, to the list of those logies of importance in computer science with a relational proof theory. (shrink)

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) opens up two new forms of knowledge: (1) knowing about alternative pathways to one outcome (equifinality) and (2) perceiving nuances of necessary cause and sufficient cause. Several misunderstandings of QCA occur in the article by Lucas and Szatrowski (this volume, p. 1). First, there are minor problems with expressions. Second, there are differences between their philosophy of science (arguments 1, 2, and 3 below) and a realist approach. Third, they misinterpret what was meant by sufficient and (...) necessary cause (arguments 4 and 5 below). The minor problems with expressions arise in sections 2.2 and 3. In section 2.2, the authors define consistency, but here they miss out on two key points. First, they neglect to say that this particular measure of consistency is a measure of sufficiency of cause, not of necessary cause. Second, they ignore the way that the consistency level exists for each possible configuration of characteristics. A configuration can be shown in one row of a truth table, with n1 = 28, n2 = 17 within a larger sample of 155, and so on (see Byrne 2009:262). Using QCA’s definition of “consistency,” we can discern more about the pattern of causality than one might initially expect. This learning is possible whether N overall is 155, or just 39, or thousands of cases. The essential task is to simplify and rank the list of configurations (Ragin 2001, 2006). (shrink)

This study investigates how patterns of media use and exposure to media messages are related to attitudes about artificial intelligence (AI) image generators. In doing so, it builds on theoretical accounts of media framing and public opinion about science and technology topics, including AI. The analyses draw on data from a survey of the US public (N = 1,035) that included an experimental manipulation of exposure to tweets framing AI image generators in terms of real art, artists’ concerns, artists’ outrage, (...) or competing interpretations. The results show that technology news use and science fiction viewing predicted support for AI art but also predicted belief that AI image generators will take jobs and steal art styles from human artists. In addition, the experimental results demonstrate that exposure to specific media messages can influence these responses. The findings carry implications for understanding the future adoption, use, and regulation of AI image generators. (shrink)

The study aims to help characterize the sort of structures about which people can acquire unconscious knowledge. It is already well established that people can implicitly learn n-grams and also repetition patterns. We explore the acquisition of unconscious structural knowledge of symmetry. Chinese Tang poetry uses a specific sort of mirror symmetry, an inversion rule with respect to the tones of characters in successive lines of verse. We show, using artificial poetry to control both n-gram structure and repetition patterns, that (...) people can implicitly learn to discriminate inversions from non-inversions, presenting a challenge to existing models of implicit learning. (shrink)

Genomic research—including whole genome sequencing and whole exome sequencing—has a growing presence in contemporary biomedical investigation. The capacity of sequencing techniques to generate results that go beyond the primary aims of the research—historically referred to as “incidental findings”—has generated considerable discussion as to how this information should be handled—that is, whether incidental results should be returned, and if so, which ones.Federal regulations governing most human subjects research in the United States require the disclosure of “the procedures to be followed” in (...) the research as part of the informed consent process. It seems reasonable to assume—and indeed, many commentators have concluded—that genomic investigators will be expected to inform participants about, among other procedures, the prospect that incidental findings will become available and the mechanisms for dealing with them. Investigators, most of whom will not have dealt with these issues before, will face considerable challenges in framing meaningful disclosures for research participants.To help in this task, we undertook to identify the elements that should be included in the informed consent process related to incidental findings. We did this by surveying a large number of genomic researchers (n = 241) and by conducting in‐depth interviews with a smaller number of researchers (n = 28) and genomic research participants (n = 20). Based on these findings, it seems clear to us that routine approaches to informed consent are not likely to be effective in genomic research in which the prospect of incidental findings exists. Ensuring that participants’ decisions are informed and meaningful will require innovative approaches to dealing with the consent issue. We have identified four prototypical models of a consent process for return of incidental findings. (shrink)

While there is an increased interest in describing attitudes of teachers, parents and peers towards students with special educational needs in regular education, there is a lack of knowledge about various variables relating to the attitudes of these three groups. The aims of this study are: (1) to examine which variables relate to the attitudes of teachers (N?=?44), parents (N?=?508) and peers (N?=?1113) towards students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Autistic Spectrum Syndrome or a cognitive disability in regular primary education and (...) (2) to examine whether teachers and parents? attitudes affect the attitudes of peers. An attitude survey was used to assess attitudes and data were analysed by means of multilevel analyses. The variables found in this study relating to attitudes can be used as a foundation to develop interventions to change attitudes. (shrink)

How can dispute records shed light on the study of dispute settlement processes and their social and political underpinnings? This volume addresses this question by investigating the interplay between record-making, disputing process, and the social and political contexts of conflicts. The authors make use of exceptionally rich charter materials from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Scandinavia, including different types of texts directly and indirectly related to conflicts, in order to contribute to a comparative survey of early medieval dispute records and (...) to a better understanding of the interplay between judicial and other less formal modes of conflict resolution. Contributors are Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade, François Bougard, Warren C. Brown, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona, Kim Esmark, Adam J. Kosto, Juan José Larrea, André Evangelista Marques, Josep M. Salrach, Igor Santos Salazar, and Francesca Tinti. (shrink)

According to Millianism, the semantic content of a proper name is its semantic referent. Many names, however, lack semantic referent; hence, so-called ‘empty’ names. Empty names raise various problems for Millianism. T.C. Ryckman, Fred Adams, Garry Fuller, Robert Stecker, Kenneth Taylor, and Nicole Wyatt, among others, have defended Millianism against these problems by appeal to pragmatics . I introduce Millianism and the problems raised by empty names for the view, then examine Pragmatic Millianism , its strength, its varieties, and (...) why the previous arguments against PM do not succeed. I then provide my argument against PM: the view oversimplifies the complex phenomenon of association between names and descriptions. I discuss an objection to my argument and rebut that. Finally, I try to draw an outline of a positive view. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalists about logic maintain that it is continuous with the empirical sciences. Taking anti-exceptionalism for granted, we argue that traditional approaches to explanation are inadequate in the case of logic. We argue that Andrea Woody's functional analysis of explanation is a better fit with logical practice and accounts better for the explanatory role of logical theories.

Reclamation is the phenomenon of an oppressed group repurposing language to its own ends. A case study is reclamation of slur words. Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt (2018) argued that a slurring utterance is a speech act which performs a discourse role assignment. It assigns a subordinate role to the target, while the speaker assumes a dominant role. This pair of role assignments is used to oppress the target. Here I focus on how reclamation works and under what conditions its (...) benefits can stabilise. I start by reviewing the data and describing preconditions and motivations for reclamation. Can reclamation be explained in the same basic framework as regular slurring utterances? I argue that it can. I also identify some features that must be a prediction of any theory of reclamation. I conclude that reclamation is an instance of a much broader class of acts we do with words to change the distribution of power: it begets power, but it also requires it. (shrink)

Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers to them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper (...) considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. (shrink)