Fortner, Robert S. (Ed)Fackler, P. Mark2024-08-022024-07-292024-08-012024-08-022011Fortner, Robert S. (Ed) & Fackler, P. Mark. (2011). The Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics. Wiley Blackwell978-1-4051-8812-8https://repository.daystar.ac.ke/handle/123456789/4868.3Book ChapterDespite having 60 stellar authors, there are topics that even they could not cover. There are simply too many problems that, unless you sit down and try to imagine creatively what they could be, would probably never be considered. There were also topics that we could not get an author to address and others that, because of pregnancies, new responsibilities or preexisting commitments, appropriate authors could not commit to write about. We could easily have filled a third volume in this handbook if everyone we contacted had been able to write. Instead of 49 essays, we might have been able to tackle as many as 100. However, this is academe in the age of publish or perish. What these two volumes did do – and we trust will do for a reader – is expand our collective understanding of ethics in the new global environment. Globalism does not merely make problems more complicated than they were in the days of isolated political ideologies, more restricted technologies, or independent media practices, it also introduces entirely new issues. The nations of the world have been committed for several decades now to the idea of communication as a human right. It is clear that these same nations do not necessarily practice what they preach. Sovereignty interferes with the ability of collectivities of nations to demand adherence to international agreements. What, then, is the most ethical position to take in this matter? Is it more ethical to demand that a right to communicate be practiced despite changes in political climates, the rise of hate parties, and the development of indigenous frameworks for ethics? Or must the principles developed during the Enlightenment and beyond within Western political traditions grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethic be applied universally? Does ethics trump faith, or is the other way around? Within a given nation, even when demographics change, there are usually ethical, political, or legal traditions that survive. But not always. The demand of Muslims for the application of Sharia in their communities, for instance, has upset traditions within nonreligious regimes. Does Sharia put non-Muslims at risk when their ethical practices may not accord with it? What happens, too, when globalization makes multinational corporations more significant in many people’s lives than their own domestic governments? What are the ethics that should be applied in a situation where financial institutions in one country have made commitments in another that they suffer a monetary meltdown? Does the recipient nation “owe” protection to institutions outside its own borders? Is it ethical that the citizens of one rich nation live lifestyles that are dependent on the underpaid labor of another – even if the labor now has work and more income than it ever had before? What are the ethics that should apply to the public discourse about global warming when it is clearly a few nations that are the primary culprits in the phenomenon? What are the ethics that should apply in the information distribution arena where some intelligence is provided by news organizations exercising editorial discretion (or even bias) and some provided by entrepreneurial bloggers or “citizen journalists?” Do the ethics of a profession prevail, must different ethical standards be accepted due to the differential status of these new competitors, or is ethics out the window entirely? Do both types of news gathering and dissemination “owe” the public that access their material the same standards? Where does the so-called “public’s right to know” begin and end in such an environment? We could go on for pages with sets of these questions. Rather than do that, however, we took on the task of recruiting the best minds that we could find – and we are sure there are many others out there that we did not locate – to tackle many of the significant issues raised by the new international context within which ethics must be practiced – insofar as it applies to the activities that collectively make up communication work. Our hope is that each reader will find the essays we have collected here to be enlightening and challenging.enCommunication–Moral and ethical aspectsMass media–Moral and ethical aspects