Book Review: The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for the 21st Century, edited by Kelly McBride and Tom Rosenstiel

Abstract

The New Ethics of Journalism: Principles for 21st Century. Kelly McBride and Tom Rosenstiel, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013. 243 pp. $38.00 pbk.Does a new century require new principles? Not necessarily, but nor could one easily resist a revised look at ethics in wake of this particular century's eruptions in economy and technology of how people make, form, and receive news. It hardly will surprise that a fourteen-essay map of journalism's changed moral landscape produced under acute curation of Poynter Institute's Kelly McBride and American Press Institute's Tom Rosenstiel offers both elegant contours and sometimes provoca- tive route-markers.Nor, given still-molten geological state of post-millennial journalism so far, should surprise that resulting map includes a few blank spots-and, to this read- er's mind, odd navigational error.The most elegant thinking is offered in opening two chapters, which jointly address a timeless yet currently compelling question facing every journalist (among others): What is truth? Twitterite orthodoxy has, to date, shed upon this point mostly meme that facts are whatever crowd eventually determines to be factual, an epistemological soup that is neither meatless nor especially nutritious. But Clay Shirky and Roy Peter Clark, variously at odds and in sync, offer far more nuanced ideas on meaning and attainability of accuracy.Here is how Shirky, for example, puts post-postmodern conundrum of truth-seek- ing in an ubiquitous, boundary-agnostic universe of opinions as to what constitute facts:Seeking truth and reporting it is becoming less about finding consensus, which has become rarer, and more about publicly sorting relevant actors from irrelevant ones. . . . In this environment, journalists have to get more practiced at sorting . . . legitimate from illegitimate opinions. In an even more significant rupture from their past, they have to get practiced at explaining to their readers why they are making choices they are making.The latter point makes more compelling editors' most prominent-and most controversial-suggestion that transparency is no longer merely an essential strategy for attaining credibility and accountability (as is, by now, almost universally accepted). Rather, is one of just three ethical principles for journalism. The other two moral pillars are, according to editors, more preeminent (and familiar) pursuit of truths, or rather, as is wisely argued, truths, and highly fashionable (and, yes, unar- guable) idea of engagement with communities.This elevated position for transparency, though certainly debatable, should not be oversimplified. McBride and Rosenstiel do not present as a cure-all, a low-bar uber-ethic:In fact, true transparency is more than disclosure. It also requires producing news in ways that can be explained and even defended. It becomes key to a Transparency requires those who produce news to anticipate how they will explain their actions before they act.Not merely one of ethical journalism's three moral pillars, then, but the key to a method. Yet, lack of methodological development of this vision of transparency is book's most striking gap. McBride and Rosenstiel rightly state that today's pub- lic demands to know how alleged facts have been sourced, chosen, and verified; what biases have been controlled for, and how so; and how news organizations themselves are comprised, supported, and operated. The editors then assert thatMost news organizations fall short every day answering these questions. We have yet to develop best practices for transparency on this level. …