Journalism Ethics from the Public's Point of View

This article uses the first independent and publicly available survey of Canadian attitudes about news media to raise two fundamental questions about how the public is related to the project of journalism ethics—the improvement of newsroom standards. The first question is conceptual: How should we understand and measure public attitudes about news media? The second question is practical: How should we go about reforming newsroom practices to meet those public expectations? The paper critiques current models for measuring public attitudes and argues for the adoption of a more adequate model, “ethical holism.” The paper also argues for a new approach to practical reform of news media, called “public participation ethics.”