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The longstanding debates aver how to enforce codes of ethics reflect a serious flaw in understanding the nature of “accountability.”; Fuzziness aver that basic notion has allowed the quantity of codes to expand, without any improvement in their quality or in media behavior. The essay maintains that we repeat the same arguments today that moralistic journalists did in the 1920s, because we lack intellectual precision aver such issues as internal vis a vis external controls, ethics vis a vis First Amendment freedoms, and different forms and degrees of accountability to government, to fellow professionals, and to the general public. Self‐imposed media codes—with enforcement provisions—and thorough analysis of social ethics are recommended.
Clifford G. Christians (Sun,) studied this question.