Easy Class Assignment For Communication Ethics! (Dr. Rocal)

Chs 10 & 9 - by Phillip Patterson and Lee Wilkins

Next, in our study of Communication Ethics, we are going to read two chapters from a widely used textbook on media ethics. Patterson and Wilkins, the authors of this textbook, adopt an institution-centered and technology-centered approach to thinking about communication ethics. Their ethical framework is a bit different than one we have explored so far – there is much less emphasis on Kantianism and Utilitarianism and much more emphasis on what we may call the ethic of inclusion in a democracy.

I. The Democratic Inclusion Ethics

The ethic of inclusion in a democracy takes it that a good and moral person is informed. The basic thought here is that a well-informed person makes better moral decisions than one who is poorly informed. In this thought, we can see a blend of Kantianism and Utilitarianism – well-informed persons are autonomous and their decisions lead to greater utility or happiness for everyone.

------ Interlude on Free Will

Of course, the issue that is not discussed here by Patterson and Wilkins is whether even a well-informed person can choose to do evil things – use that information to harm people or not act on the basis of that information at all.

There are two basic models of a human being on the basis of which the above issue makes sense: the free will model and the knowledge-determinist model. According to the free will model, a person can choose to act one way or its exact opposite with regard to what the person knows (use the information for good or evil). According to the knowledge-determinist model, the person is a product of what he knows and can only act one way as a result of what he knows – a person will act in one and only one way as a result of what he knows and could not have chosen to act any other way. Patterson and Wilkins probably rely on the knowledge-determinist model: the only way to make better moral decisions (in a Kantian, Utilitarian or other manner) is to be well- informed. It is sufficient to be well-informed to make better moral decisions. But even if we adopt the free will model, we would still say that the only way to make better moral decisions is to be well-informed. However, on the free will model, being well-informed is necessary but not sufficient to make better moral decisions. Being well-informed and choosing to act in a moral manner would both, as two separate acts, be necessary and co-sufficient for making better moral decisions. Whether knowledge is both necessary and sufficient, or only necessary, for morally better decisions is beyond the scope of communication ethics – it is enough for us to know that knowledge is at the very least necessary for making better moral decisions.

-------- End of Interlude on Free Will

In light of all this, a communication is ethical if it leads to a person being better informed. In light of what we have discussed in this class, it means that a person knows facts as well as explanations and ramifications of those facts. Just knowing facts, without

understanding explanation and ramification (or the meaning of those facts) is not knowledge. There is also a third important component in being knowledgeable: exposure to information that challenges what we already know (either by pointing out that there is more to know or by pointing out that we may be wrong by directly contradicting what we know). The third component takes seriously that human human beings are fallible knowers: we do not know everything and can turn out to be mistaken about what we think we know at any moment. The discussion in the present module develops and explores the third component of knowledge and of communication ethics. We can also clearly see how all three components, and especially the third component, are important in a democracy, and especially in a pluralist democracy. In a democracy, and especially in a pluralist democracy, in order for all of us to act collectively in public and governance, we need to be aware of what benefits and harms each of us, according to our different values, in order for all of us to live in peace and prosper together. A democracy in which citizens are not informed about each other's lives and values is not going to be very successful at choosing policies and actions that benefit all of us as much as possible and harm all of us as little as possible.

II. The Two Principles of The Democratic Inclusion Ethics

With all of the preceding in mind, we should lay out from the very beginning of our discussion the two values that are central to our discussion and that are also the values of democracy. These two values are found in the middle of Chapter Nine. One. “People must be exposed to the materials that they would not have chosen in advance and come across views that they would not have previously selected or even agree with.” Two. People “... should have a range of common experiences”. The first of the above two principles is of greater interest to our discussion (and we may say that it is a necessary condition of the second in a contemporary pluralist democracy).

With these two principles in mind, let us go to Chapter Ten.

III. The Undemocratic Component In The Structure of Popular Entertainment And Arts – Reinforcement of Stereotypes

Chapter Ten starts by informing us that whereas in the past the media has largely been used for distributing information it had at some point shifted its focus onto entertainment. We need to introduce a third category in order to better understand what is at stake in entertainment. The third category is that of art. Since the context in which we are discussing the shift from art into entertainment is not aesthetics, we will not discuss this shift in terms of beauty. Our context is that of communication ethics, and so our interest in the shift from art to entertainment is in the quality of information that is communicated by art and entertainment. Art, which for our purposes is critical art, presents us with a challenge to the status quo thinking. Specifically, it challenges the stereotypes of which status quo thinking consists. It expands our moral imagination by presenting us with characters and situations that are more complex than our own lives – and exposes us to what we would otherwise not see. In this sense, art is democratic. Of course, not all artworks are like this – but more on this at the end of this section.

Just bear with the analysis for now. Art works by presenting us with fictions that evoke strong emotional responses. This is the fundamental difference between news and art – news (when it is critical and challenges status quo thinking) does not present us with fictions but with facts and news does it in order to inform us and not in order to invoke emotional responses in us. Critical art is not rare and not easy – and it calls for profound and taxing responses from us. Entertainment, on the other hand, is there to be available for mass consumption with ease. The institutional structure of developed mass media – production in large quantities for mass consumption – calls for mass entertainment rather than for the rare and difficult critical art. Entertainment, that is easy and available in mass, due to its nature, does not challenge status quo and reinforces stereotypes. The reliance on and reinforcement of stereotypes are called forth from popular entertainment due to that it must produce for quick and voluminous consumption in the quickest way possible – and the most efficient way to do that is to appeal to the already available in culture stereotypes that require as little critical thought as possible. This quickening and simplification that the institutional structure of media calls for is termed “compression.” The context of stories must be established as quickly as possible so that as little work as possible can be done in order to get to the pay off – the pleasure of entertainment. Popular art, or entertainment, loses the critical edge of critical art. Popular art, or entertainment, in reinforcing stereotypes, deprives us of and does not present us with an opportunity to engage information and views that we would not seek out on our own. In this, popular art, or entertainment, is not in harmony with, or even opposes, the first democratic principle outlined above.

… entertainment content can reinforce the status quo by constantly depicting certain social groups in an unflattering and unrepresentative way, presenting a distorted picture of reality. Groups as disparate as Muslims and evangelicals have chafed under depictions (or omissions) that reinforce cultural stereotypes despite evidence to the contrary. … Given only 15 seconds to register a message in a commercial, an advertising copywriter will resort to showing us the presumed stereotype of a librarian, a mechanic or a pharmacist. Using stereotypes as a form of mental shorthand is a natural way media work … The communicator actually starts with what the receiver knows – or believes he knows – and then constructs a message that fits within that reality. … Time is saved in plucking the chords already deeply held by the public rather than challenging stereotypes. So pimps are African-American, terrorists are Middle Eastern and no one challenges the unstated assumptions. The audience gets the idea of a pimp or a terrorist, but notions of racism and worse have been planted as well. (Patterson and Wilkins, 258)

What is especially alarming about the reinforcement of stereotypes in the popular media is that it is unconscious - “... where the entertainment media get their power – not in the overt messages but in the underlying assumptions that (if unchallenged) will become widely held societal beliefs.” It is not that entertainment inculcates these stereotypes in us by claiming that they are true. Entertainment ingrains the stereotypes in us by exposing us to them and not challenging them. We can gather from the discussion of entertainment's loss of art's critical edge that one of the functions of critical art is to challenge stereotypes – and art does this as unconsciously as entertainment does.

---------- Interlude on Art, as the Idea of Art, and Ideas As Such

What we have discussed is the idea of art. Actual art works contain more than the idea of art – they may also entertain, for example. In this sense, actual art works are part art and part something else (part entertainment, for example). An art work may challenge stereotypes as well as reinforce stereotypes In the same way, what we have discussed is the idea of entertainment. Actual works of entertainment do more than just entertain – they may also be art in part. A work of entertainment may reinforce stereotypes as well as challenge stereotypes. However, the claim above that media for the most part contains works that are mostly entertainment (reinforce stereotypes), with little if any, art (challenging of stereotypes). What are we talking about when we talk about ideas? We are talking about functions. Above, we discussed the function of critical art (challenging stereotypes) and the function of entertainment (reinforcing of stereotypes). The insight here is that any existing thing performs more than one function at a time. Perhaps the somewhat odd thing here is that we usually identify elevation of mood as the main fiction of entertainment, and not reinforcing of stereotypes. That's true. But the point of the article is that the way in which mass media elevates mood through entertainment necessarily involves a significant reinforcement of stereotypes. We are not new to a discussion of ideas. What we have discussed as journalism, with Eliot and Ozar, was a discussion of the idea or function of journalism. Actual acts and products of journalism are more than just just journalism – they may also have art and entertainment components and functions.

--------- End of Interlude On Ideas

IV. Fake News Is Entertainment And Is Significantly Undemocratic

The second part of the entertainment's dominance over the news is the rise of fake news. We are not going to employ the term “fake news” in a way that has become established since Donald Trump's presidency. We will use this term in a more restricted sense that the authors of the Media Ethics textbook (Patterson and Wilkins) use. Fake news discusses real news events and displays real news audio and video footage – for the purpose of entertainment. Let us contrast fake news with real news, or news proper. News proper also discusses real news and displays real news audio and footage – for the purpose of informing the public. The purposes that we are discussing above are not referring to the purposes that are intended by persons in their minds. The purposes refer to the functions of fake news and news proper in the world. The function of fake news is entertainment; let us not forget that this in all probability means of reinforcements of stereotypes rather than challenging stereotypes and opening up minds). The function of news proper is informing the public. Two different functions, even though these two types of news may be discussing the same events and using the same audio and video footage. The real distinction of interest to us is that news proper is obligated to tell the truth, whereas fake news is not. News proper does not have the license to reshape what it presents for the comic effect and entertainment, whereas news proper does. If we take Ward's criteria of objectivity in news reporting, news proper has an obligation to live up to the

standard of objectivity, as much as it can, whereas fake news has no such obligation at all. It is easy to see that Patterson and Wilkins have something like Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, Trevor Noah and those types of shows in mind. Bottom line – fake news is a poor and often misleading source for getting the news about the world (though a great source of entertainment it may be). And the problem is that too many people too much of the time rely (whether intentionally or not) on the fake news to inform themselves about the news of the world. Fake news, as entertainment, also violates the first principle of democratic communication – it does not expose us to information and views that we would not encounter on our own.

One more interesting point is made about fake news – how fake news can have a critical function. In light of our previous discussion of art, as the domain proper of the critical edge, we may even call this the critical artistic function of the fake news. This critical function of the fake news is suggested in the Carlson/Stewart interview. Stewart suggested that the inadequacy of real news and real news shows becomes clear when they do not seem to be any different than fake news shows. This makes sense, as by the very nature of what fake news shows are, they cannot do an objective critique of news shows – since fake news does not do anything objective to begin with. However, fake news can make it obvious to the viewer (without making a claim about it) that real news shows are no different than fake news shows and that real news shows therefore should undergo reform.

V. Internet And Social Media Do Not Promote Public Life In A Democracy – They Tend To Isolate in Groups Like-Minded Persons

The next topic for our discussion is from Chapter Nine. Chapter Nine seeks to come to terms with the new electronic technologies – the internet, in general, and the social media, in particular, with reference to how this novelty effects the news (professional journalists vs. bloggers/citizen jurnalists), but not only that. We start with the thought that the internet and the social media are immensely powerful – it can bring down governments by bringing people together for organized action. The example given is that of Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East in the beginning of the second decade of this century. Calls on social media brought together large numbers of people in a protest to the current governments and demanding the stepping down of the heads of those governments. The heads of the governments stepped down in response. The internet and the social media are excellent for immediately rallying people together for common popular causes in the short term. That, however, seems to be the limit of the political importance of the social media. The internet and the social media do a lot less well where a real debate, dialogue and compromises are required – all of which, in turn, seems to require long-term, face-to-face relations. The internet and the social media proved to be effective at bringing governments down but not at raising them up and promoting their function. The Arab Spring failed to bring about superior governments than the ones that were put down. The key here is that public life requires real interaction, exchange, debate, compromises, and consensus and resolutions reached by people whose values may be very different from each other. Social media, however, polarizes people into in-groups and out- groups, the members of which, most of the time, listen to each other preaching to the choir that is each other and ending up in screaming matches with people who think differently and

have different values – instead of having productive debates and reaching consensus by compromise with others. In other words, the internet and social media score poorly according to the two principles of democracy. As a result of the internet and social media, persons isolated into groups of like-minded thinkers do not seriously encounter and engage views that they do not seek and do not build a common basis with other citizens on the basis of which a successful democratic life of autonomous individuals can take place. In my own experience, people on social media platforms simply state their opinions, praise ones who think like they do, and ignore or get into screaming matches with those who disagree with them. The preceding thought is encapsulated in the concept of “personalized news”. Personalized news refers to that there are algorithms on the internet, and on the social media platforms, in particular, by which our preferences (consumer preferences, political preferences, etc.) are are surveyed and are catered to by sending more of the same kind of materials back to us (ads for similar types of products, political campaigns, as well as news reporting). Such algorithms keep happy their consumers, advertisers, and even journalistic outlets that purchase such services. In my own experience, news and other media articles that are recommended to me on social media platforms, tend to be from the same kind of publications from which I read in the past.

VI. Professional Vs. Citizen Journalism

The last item for us to discuss is how the internet impacts journalism by making possible citizen journalism via blogs and other such platforms. We can identify two different moments in journalism. Moment one – gathering information. Moment two – verifying information. Ward has given us a long account of the second moment. Professional journalists (those who work for news outlets, have professional degrees, certificates, and association memberships related to journalism) are much better at the verification moment than are non-professional citizen journalists. They have been trained for it, they have the resources at the publications where they work, there is editorial staff that assists them, etc. Non-professional, citizen journalists, on the other hand, are much better at the gathering of information – at least as far as speed and immediacy of this process are concerned. These persons can simply copy and paste on their blogs whatever they see on someone else's site on the web, or take a photograph and immediately publish it, etc. They do not have to go through editorial controls and decision-making in order to publish anything. So, the advantage of professional journalism is that it is better verified, but the disadvantage of if is that it's slow. And, the advantage of citizen journalism is that it is fast. But the disadvantage of it is that it is much more poorly (if at all) verified than is professional journalism. The point here is that we should receive each type of journalism while keeping its advantages and disavanatges in mind. Ideally, it seems, we should not so much reject one in favor of the other, but use both wisely. Finally, why do we call citizen journalism, described above, journalism? Eliot and Ward provided us with an answer to this question from the very beginning of the class. As long as one puts out something useful for matters of public interest – safety, autonomy, community

building, etc. - one is doing journalism. Chapter Nine points out that the internet widely expands the possibilities of doing journalism.