Lecture #8

Our eighth (I just realised how odd the word eighth is to spell..) lecture was on ethics. Now, 8 is up there in my favourite numbers so I was hoping this would be a good lecture. My other favourites are 36 and 52 and well, that’s just ridiculous. I’m not going to 52 weeks of lectures just to find out about that one.

I know you’re anxious to find out whether I liked the lecture or not, which is a little silly because I know you know the answer. I loved it! Who doesn’t love a bit of controversy? The age-old puzzle of what is good or bad, right or wrong, ethical or unethical? And on top of that, the difficulty of distinguishing between the bad, the wrong and the just plain tacky.

One thing we covered in depth which I was interested by was the three ethical theories. I’ve never heard of anything really like that in ethics, so touching on each of them really had me hooked. As we went through them, they began to make sense and even more so when we looked at examples.

Out of Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue, I think the one that I liked the most was Virtue ethics, simply because it made the most sense and I related to it most. Virtue ethics come down to the fact that goodness and happiness will come from good habits of character which is essentially every motivational sticky note I have around my room condensed into one sentence.

Deontology boiled down to being an attitude that by following all of the rules, you will be doing the right thing. Which we all know isn’t true, but all ethics codes are fundamentally deontological really. Consequentialism was basically obtaining the right or good outcome of a situation regardless of how you get there – you know; the end may justify the means, greatest good for greatest number etc.

I think, though, ethics in journalism boils down to one primary point. Treat others as you would like to be treated, and things should go well.