Ethical issues in media

Introduction

Ethical issues within the media are much harder to judge than legal constraints  This is because there is no specific guidelines as to what is and isn't acceptable in the spectrum of ethical constraints. In this post I will be explaining what ethical issues are and include some examples of productions which have raised ethical concern.

Ethical issues

Rather than legal constraints, ethical issues are based on judgement. They are what society deem as what is marally acceptable. If something is seen as ethically wrong than it is investigated to see if it is breaking any laws such as 'the obscene publications act'. However, if it is not in violation of any of these law than is comes under ethical issues. Tis means that no law has been broken however the public may see is as offensive or controversial. Many ethical concerns are raised by groups of specific people. These groups may find the publication offensive, due to how the minority are represented. Ethical concerns which come into to media production are things such as;

• Protecting under 18's
• Representation of age,Gender,race, disability and religion
• Using off the record information
• The power to influence public opinion
• Interviewing vulnerable people or children
• Intruding on individuals privacy
• Anything that could cause offence or harm

As a producer you would need to be aware of ethical concerns. Although there are no specific guidelines you would still need to be conscious that some material may offend. If you create material that would offend such as a comedy show mocking a minority, you may lose viewing figures. This is because people in the minority being mocked may refuse to watch or read you publications due to it being offensive. This means you must check your material before publishing it so that you are sure it will not offend.

Examples

An example of something within the media which has raised ethical concerns would be the BBC incident 'Sachs Gate'. As I stated in a previous post, this was involving radio presenter's Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. In short, they called beloved actor Andrew Sachs and verbally abused him. Upon the release of the show two people complained. This caused a domino effect in which eventually resulted in about 38,000 complaints. Although, they didn't break any laws they raised many ethical concerns. This was based on peoples own morale judgement  Mainly, due to the fact it was seen as unnecessary due to the age of the actor. It caused such a stir that the BBC had to take action against this to please the public. As a result of the event both radio presenter got suspended without pay. Many other concerns were raised by this incident. This is because the show was pre-recorded. This means it would have had to go through BBC producer's first. Due to this there is a lot of argument other whose fault it was.

Another example would be a similar incident involving comedian Frankie Boyle. On a show he was featuring in named 'Mock of the week' he made an offensive joke. This joke was made to insult Olympic winner Rebecca Adlington. He stated " The thing nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon". Due to this unnecessary insult it sparked much controversy against the comedian. As a result he was banned from the show 'Mock of the week'