Abstract
The author of the article poses the question repeatedly asked in the world of media, culture and science, concerning the limits of journalistic integrity and informational necessity in the media coverage of human death, especially in relation to how the moment of a tragic death and its immediate consequences are presented. He considers the teachings of the Church and John Paul II on the necessity of respecting human dignity in journalism, with particular focus on the dignity of the dying person, in addition to the respect towards the body of the deceased person. The author analyzes selected media messages with content of interest from the years 2017–2020, and referring to the reactions of some representatives of foreign media, he makes an attempt to construct a list of postulates for increasing the degree of sensitivity in the area of the discussed issues. In the preparation of this article, which is essentially a case study in journalistic ethics, the method of content analysis was used primarily in relation to the examined media presentations and the analytical‑synthetic method when it comes to extracting ethical guidelines from the analyzed texts and in constructing the conclusions.
Highlights
In the third decade of the 21st century, technological progress has affected journalism so significantly that, in a sense, it has redefined it: the Internet, having become a specific environment for the existence and expansion of the so‐called traditional media, is proposing new media formats and genres, creating the possibility of their preparation, publication and reception by an increasingly wider range of users
Referring to the cited examples of media representation of human death in the light of the teaching of the Church and John Paul II himself, and bearing in mind the postulates of Marcus Pindur, it can be said that in contemporary media representations of human death, sensationalism often surpasses the criterion of informativeness
Reporting a tragic death in order to “break taboos” or “as a warning” does not necessarily entail releasing of photographs or video recordings similar to those used in the examples mentioned above, as we all have often seen
Summary
In the third decade of the 21st century, technological progress has affected journalism so significantly that, in a sense, it has redefined it: the Internet, having become a specific environment for the existence and expansion of the so‐called traditional media, is proposing new media formats and genres, creating the possibility of their preparation, publication and reception by an increasingly wider range of users. The purpose of this article is to attempt to identify the principles of journalistic ethics relating to media coverage of human death both from the teaching of John Paul II and from the work of some contemporary media scholars, followed by relating them to selected media coverage of relevant content. What principles of journalistic ethics applying to the respect for the dignity of the person dying and the intimacy of the moment of his or her death in media coverage can be derived from the teachings of the Church, John Paul II, and contemporary scholars dealing with media ethics? In view of the above, it is easy to agree with a media scholar’s statement: “Information is not an easy good to manage, as it breaks all the laws of economics” (Przybysz, 2011, p. 37) and: “Information by its very nature demands that it be managed as an asset ... to be consciously and prudently disposed of ” (Przybysz, 2011, p. 37)
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