Ethics and Eloquence in Journalism

Abstract Journalists’ common sense, their everyday moral intuitions, offers a practical but flawed way of knowing right from wrong. But rather than discounting or dismissing this “naïve everyday ethical knowledge,” which would rob journalism of its normative substance, we propose to rehabilitate it through a process of public justification. Grounded in aspects of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative ethics, we offer a model of press accountability that understands ethics as a process rather than an outcome. Our being-ethical-means-being-accountable theme emphasizes the role of eloquence, understood as the competence to argue in ways that advance common or shared interests, in an open and accessible discursive test of the validity of journalism's moral norms. Keywords: accountabilitycommon sensediscourse ethicsjournalism ethics Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Miami Beach, Florida, August 2002. Notes 1. For a worthwhile discussion of discursive approaches to ethics, dealing in detail with the similarities and dissimilarities between the works of Habermas and Apel, see Arens (Citation1997) and especially Benhabib (Citation1990). For an essentially dialogic approach to journalism ethics, although not in the tradition of discourse ethics, see Christians et al. (Citation1993). 2. Notwithstanding Kant's appreciation for the power and appeal of common sense, he essentially excluded it from moral philosophy. Kant reduced common sense to a judgment of taste, a question of aesthetics altogether removed from the ideal of “pure practical reason.” For a summary and critique of Kant's view of common sense and his rejection of “common moral sensibility,” see Gadamer (Citation1988, pp. 30–4). 3. In the opening paragraph of her book The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm famously wrote about journalists and their subjects: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse” (1990, p. 3). 4. Others, however, reject Habermas's contention that discourse operates without a telos. Cornell (Citation1985, p. 376), for example, argues that dialogue of the kind discourse ethics embraces is itself a good: “Within dialogism the procedures for intersubjective debate and political participation are substantively important in that they reinforce a particular kind of relationship that is considered an end in itself.” See also Rehg, who deals in detail with the right and the good in discourse ethics; see especially his chapter on “Discourse Ethics and the Good” (1994, pp. 112–49). 5. But we take seriously Benhabib's (1990, p. 333) reformulation of discourse ethics, which seeks to reconcile Habermas's commitment to “procedural universalism” with Gadamer's recognition of the inevitability of a “contextually embedded and situationally sensitive judgment of particulars.” With feminist moral theorists and others who insist that, no matter how pristine the process, all practical reason is historically informed, Benhabib rejects any “hard distinction” between questions of justice and questions of the good life. Indeed, Benhabib wants to expand the domain of discourse ethics to include questions that deal with the “material presuppositions concerning the self and social institutions.” 6. The logic of deliberation—i.e., democratic deliberation—demands genuinely inclusive fora for debate/discussion, a point Young underscores when she reminds us of the importance of accommodating “all ways of making claims and giving reasons” rather than excluding or marginalizing people who fail to express themselves “according to culturally specific norms of tone, grammar, and diction” (2000, p. 39). Accordingly, the “ability and desire” to communicate in ways that promote mutual understanding, Young writes, “requires no special education or training beyond the significant demands of co-operative social interaction” (Citation2000, p. 38). 7. Rehg (1994, p. 39) nicely summarizes the “basic idea behind” the principle of universalization and its connection to generalizable or general interests: “assuming a willingness and ability to engage in the effort to understand others, if everyone knows what his or her interests are and gets an equal opportunity to express those interests—i.e., an equal chance to argue for norm proposals that express those interests and argue against norm proposals that damage those interests—then if an acceptable norm emerges from discourse at all, it must embody in some way a general interest.” 8. Recent calls for transparency in journalism (e.g., Plaisance, Citation2007; Ziomek, Citation2005) miss the mark. Transparency implies disclosure, not debate. A more transparent press may or may not turn out to be a more accountable press, if by accountability we mean a commitment by journalists to engage others, journalists and non-journalists alike, in an open and public discussion of press practices and performance. 9. For relevant and worthwhile critiques of the role of codes of ethic in journalism, see Christians (Citation1989) and Iggers (Citation1998). 10. The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, revised in 1996, has been widely reprinted; it is available online at http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp.