The Media and Its Responsibilities - Essay Example

The Media and its Responsibilities The Media and its Responsibilities There has always been a common debate about the extent to which media should be free. As much as the media need to be free in order to effectively do their day to day activities, the main reason as to why they require to be given freedom is for them to do what their responsibilities to the society is. Currently it is clearly evident that most of the modern media houses have more interest in maintaining their ratings at the expense of fulfilling their responsibilities to the society. This means that media houses prefer giving the public the information they want instead of giving them the information that they truly need. As much as this is what is common in the modern world, it can sometimes be highly unethical. With reference to the ethical theories this paper seeks to discuss the media and its responsibilities. Apart from feeding the public with the latest information the media has the obligation to educate the public. This is an obligation that media houses have taken for granted. This must be because the result of allot of education materials does not yield the desired results. Thus, it will be good to say that most media outlets are inclining much towards entertainment as opposed to education (Stocchetti & Kukkonen, 2011). This is not ethically right in various ways. Looking at the ethical theory of deontology, professionalism dictates that people stick to activities that are ethically acceptable even in situations where doing the ethical things will not yield a positive result (Kane, 2010). It is noticeable that a theory of such essence to the practices of media profession is ignored by most of the players in this industry. This would be a rather hard theory for the media to adhere to especially at this age when most media are result oriented. Nevertheless they still have to try their best to remain ethical for the sake of their long term benefits. The media have the responsibility of making sure that any content that features in their programs have balance in terms of age, gender, and culture. This is just to ensure that no one gets to see or hear content that will either make them uncomfortable or corrupt their morals. One of the most common of such scenarios is the content that children should be allowed to access. For instance, there have been a lot of concerns on the rate at which there are violent scenes in children’s programmes. This has particularly been noticed to be a reason behind the increase of violence in the society. When a child grows up viewing violence as a virtue, they will definitely opt for violence whenever they are faced with difficulties. This is considered as one of the biggest failures of modern media. In such cases, they should adhere to the theory of virtue which asserts that professionals should strive to do what “good people” would have done in practical life situations (Carden, 2006). There is no better person that would want to promote violence in the society. The media should also filter their advertisement to make sure that they do not corrupt the moral values of the community especially children. There are some advertisements that are not worthy being aired or printed by any media outlet. This is always because of the moral value of such advertisements. For instance, when children see advertisements that depict alcoholic drinks as drinks that brings out the best from a person they would be tempted to take it one day. In such cases it will be noticed that children are not always willing to wait till the time they are adults. Instead, they will always want to have a taste of such drinks as soon as possible. This will lead to a scenario where children start taking alcoholic drinks before they attain they become adults. Furthermore, there are some advertisements that have scenes, images, and messages that are clearly not of moral standards that children should see or hear. In such cases the media applies the theory of virtue to make sure that they act in a way that will be of benefit to the community at large. However, under such circumstances they will have to forego the economic benefits of publishing of airing such advertisements. The media should also make sure that whatever they feed the public with is of cultural balance. This is because if they incline toward a single culture, some cultures might get offended. Cultures all over the world can never be the same. Some things are considered as good as some cultures while other cultures see them to be highly inappropriate (Silverstone, 2007). This means that the media have the responsibility of considering the cultures of their potential consumers in order to make sure that they accommodate all cultures and not just a single one. This will also mean that they are aware of this value so that they avoid things that would be considered to be a nuisance by people of some cultures. They should also make sure they do not depict a certain culture to be superior to the others. This is because their consumers would definitely be of diverse cultures. However, under some situation there must be few people that would be offended by material that are aired or published by the media. The consideration of all culture will be in accordance with the theory of ethical relativism. This theory talks about the fact that cultures are different in many ways and thus there is no way that there can be situation universal moral standards. The media are, therefore, expected to always be keen on the cultures of their potential clients. This will help them make sure that they do not go ahead and make their consumers feel offended by what they give to them. The theory also suggests that media houses should also consider giving to the public things that are morally accepted across a number of cultures. As much as culture might be diverse, there are always things that are considered to be morally right by most cultures in the world. They could also use their ethical standards of morality to determine what is right for the public. In the modern world, one of the most sensitive issues in media practices is gender sensitivity. This is because previously most media houses would favor things that are pleasing to a certain gender at the expense of what members of the opposite gender would want or need. However, this trend is slowly changing. One of the things that are modernly considered to be the responsibility of the media is promoting gender equality. This is not specifically through word but also through actions. Failure to do this they will be failing in their duty of making sure that they promote gender equality. This can only be possible if they develop a working culture that would promote gender equality. The equality can also be evident in their programming and publications. The media has the responsibility of offering entertainment to the public. This is slowly growing to be the most common role played by the media. Entertainment makes the media more appealing to the public. Someone might even think that this was initially their main purpose. However, there is always a conflict when it comes to deciding to what extent the morality of entertainment materials should be checked. This means that when it comes to issues of this nature, there is always a dilemma when making decisions on the entertainment material to give to the public (Fourie, 2007). This is even intensified by the fact that cultures are different when it comes to matters of moral values and standards. As explained by ethical relativism, it is impossible for there to be universal ethical standards. Media houses should therefore just consider the validity of these materials by their professional ethics standards given that getting universal moral standards is impossible. Influence is an integral part of the role of the media to the society. However, due to human imperfection media personalities in some instances tend to be biased in the way they influence the public. Every time some information is revealed to the public there is always a very high possibility that there must have been an addition or exclusion. Under such circumstances, the result will be that the influence that the information has on the public and their perceptions of certain issues is not always correct. As a result the media always cause an unjustified reaction to certain situations. However, media houses have the ethical obligation by letting the public know the information as it is without any alterations. Despite this obligation there are circumstances in which the media can be allowed to alter information, for the sake of peace and stability in the society. The media should also strive to always foster unity and peaceful co-existence in the society. This means that they should shy away from revealing information that is likely to cause animosity and unrest in the society. In such cases the media are always allowed to exclude some information when they know that by letting the information to the public they will be causing unrest. At such a point they will be acting in accordance with the theory of Utilitarianism. The theory of Utilitarianism justifies the moral result regardless of whether the means of attaining these results were ethical or not. This will basically help in ensuring that there is peaceful co-existence despite there being information that was kept from the public. The media are always expected to respect the privacy of individuals. In some instances media houses always fail to adhere to this expectation. Celebrities and other popular people are always the victims of such incidents. The media have the perfect knowledge that the public is always excessively interested in matters which regard celebrities and their lives. Some media houses take advantage of this fact without considering whether or not the celebrities involved would like to have a little bit more privacy. The result is always a situation where they make the lives of the people involved uncomfortable especially when in public. In most cases, media personalities prefers acting on ethical egoism which an ethical position where the individual tend to what is good for their own selves. The media also have the responsibility depicting the actual state of the society at a particular time. In most cases the media always tend to lie too much on a particular side. Sometime they tend to focus too much on the positive things in the society to an extent that they never show the negative things in the society. On the other hand, sometimes they also over emphasize on the negative things in the society neglecting the positive ones. When they overemphasize on the negative things they are most like to create tension in the society. When they overemphasize on the positive things in the society they are likely to create a sense of false security amongst people in the society. Having this in mind, it will therefore, be advisable for the media to always make sure that they give accurate and balanced information to the public at all times. When someone thinks of ethical theories one should always have it in mind that these are theories that are meant to encourage peaceful existence of persons. As shown in this paper, these theories help human beings make appropriate in very tricky situations in their daily lives. As a result, they are able to make decisions, not only for their well being but for the benefit of the whole community. The media being a profession that mostly involves being of service to the society at large, it is always important for persons in this profession to try their best to be ethical in all their activities. As the theories show, it is never easy to stick to ethical practices. However, being ethical, professionally and socially has proved to be one of the few effective ways of reducing the chances of having problems with other people. References Carden, S. D. (2006). Virtue ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre. London: Continuum. Stocchetti, M., & Kukkonen, K. (2011). Critical media analysis: An introduction for media professionals. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Fourie, P. J. (2007). Media studies. Cape Town: Juta. Silverstone, R. (2007). Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Kane, R. (2010). Ethics and the quest for wisdom. 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