Media Ethics

This is a good book, well written, highly literate but also highly accessible, explaining ideas very clearly. The authors claims to distinguish his text by centering it on the philosophy of ethics and the philosophical justification for asserting principles, which I find to be exactly what he does, and he does it very well. The resulting text is thereby more substantive and more deliberative, providing the young media professional with a robust framework from which to parse out the at times novel circumstances they will undoubtedly confront in today's dynamic media environment, additionally providing a set of key principles that aid in relating the philosophy of ethics to practice. I particularly like that Professor Plaisance charges the media consumer with 'a moral duty to minimize their own ignorance, to work at being a citizen capable of effectively engaging the wider world, to inform themselves of the realities beyond their own life bubble, and being savvy about what we are reading and watching, and gain a sold understanding of bias.' Would that all citizens read this and took its charge to heart. The world would be better." —Lawrence L. Garber, Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing, Elon University

“Media ethics may sound like an oxymoron - like government intelligence - but in his book, Plaisance makes it crystal clear that if society is to be virtuous, and indeed more civil, practitioners across all media disciplines, whether journalists, public relations-advertising-marketing professionals, or social media technologists, must seek authenticity, transparency, accountability, and, most of all, the common good, in all that they do. The future of what we consider ‘civil’ization hangs in the balance." —Dr. Donn J. Tilson, APR, Fellow PSRA, Associate Professor Emeritus of Public Relations, School of Communication, University of Miami