Hello all, I’ve decided to take a slightly different tone with my blog today as the ethical values of the News of the World and journalism are really sticking in my craw recently. Since 2005 the News of the World (and other newspapers, I believe) have been hacking mobile phones of people in the lime light in order to gain access to personal and private information. I know journalists do this because it’s in the interest of the public, but really where do you draw the line? Is journalism forgetting basic moral principles?
You can argue the toss with me as much as you like, you’re probably thinking that I’m basing my opinion on psychological research ethics where informed consent and confidentiality are essential, I suppose I am but I’m basing this on human rights too. The majority of ethical codes are supposedly in line with the Helsinki Act which is an Act that outlines basic human rights. If I’m not mistaken, people of public interest are still people, privacy is a basic human right, so why should people of public interest have a basic human right taken away from them just to potentially satisfy others. Peoples feelings are hurt all at the expense of a trashy news story that will be forgotten by next week. Lets put this into a non-media context, for example in the context of a friendship group. Imagine that you’re popular in your place of education or employment, you know everyone and everyone listens to you. One day a new student or colleague emerges and they seem a bit quiet. At lunch everyone is talking about the new student / colleague yet nobody knows much about this person. You see this person alone so you ask them a bit about themselves, they disclose a small amount of information about themselves to you (e.g. they got thrown out of their previous school / workplace). You tell your friends about this and they show interest and start devising theories as to why the person was thrown out. You don’t know the reason why the person was thrown out and the person won’ tell you so you decide to hack into the person’s mobile phone and email account. You read every message they get for a few days and then something significant comes through, you find out that the person was thrown out because they had a relationship with someone in a senior position. Shocked at this information you start to spread it amongst your friends and anyone else who cares to listen, you even blog about this information and spread it on social networking websites. Does all of this seem wrong to you? in the context given this would be classed as harassment and invading someone’s privacy, you would get some kind of disciplinary for your behaviour and your “victim” would feel extremely hurt. So how is this justifiable in a media / journalism context? A stereotypical journalist would argue that it’s ok because it’s in the public interest (I know so because I had an argument with a journalist on Twitter about the whole Andy Coulson affair).
I know I said that I wouldn’t dig too much into psychology with this one, but I feel that Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement (1999) can explain how journalists justify what they are doing as morally / ethically acceptable. Lets take a look at each mechanism in turn and apply it to the situation:
1) Reconstructing Conduct:
This is the mechanism where the individual (in this case the journalist) portrays inhumane behaviour as though it has a moral purpose in order to make it socially acceptable. Journalists often portray their privacy invasion as exposing information that is in the interest of the public making it seem like they are doing good to the public by exposing what Cheryl Cole ate for her dinner yesterday evening, do the public really need to know this? would it even be in the public interest if journalists didn’t report on it in the first place? Privacy invasion is only morally acceptable if someone is trying to get hold of information that could potentially put society at risk, for example information about a planned terrorist attack.
2) Displacing or Diffusing Responsibility:
This is simply when the responsibility of the inhumane behaviour is displaced or diffused. Newspapers often employ lots of journalists who all shift the blame for privacy invasion onto someone else. Lets take the phone hacking scandal for example. the News of the World journalists all shifted the blame onto Andy Coulson who at first denied the allegations but later said that other newspapers hacked phones to gain information too, thus diffusing the responsibility, everyone does it so it’s ok!
3) Disregarding or Misrepresenting Injurious Consequences:
This is the mechanism where explanations of the inhumane behaviour minimizes harm or confrontation is totally avoided. This is perhaps a difficult mechanism to apply to the journalism situation but invading privacy to gain information “in the publics interest” is certainly minimizing the potential harm of their actions, they claim that their actions fall into their code of ethics which makes the behaviour ok, forgetting that the code of ethics is really lose and has loads of loop holes anyway. The journalism code of ethics could literally minimize any action and make it seem ok! I suppose avoidance is easy for journalists because it’s usually their job to publish explanations of inhumane actions to the public, they’re not going to expose their own inhumane actions now are they? Thus confrontation is successfully avoided.
4) Dehumanizing or Blaming the Victim:
This is the mechanism where the victim is dehumanized, thus not seen as a person. Journalists often forget that celebrities are people too, they have emotions and feelings like everyone else. They also have the basic human right to a private life. Celebrities are just something of public interest according to the stereotypical journalist. The blaming the victim mechanism is perhaps hard to explain in this context as I can’t think of an example where journalists have blamed celebrities or people of public interest for their own inhuman actions, if I ever come across an example I will let you know.
You can find a copy of Bandura’s paper here if you’re interested enough to actually read it, trust me it’s worth it:
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review. Retrieved July 7th, 2011 from http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Bandura1999PSPR.pdf
Can I just take time to say that everything expressed in this blog entry is my personal opinion (I’m not shifting the blame for my actions onto anyone else here =P). Also my opinion only applies to journalists who invade peoples privacy, I know there are some good journalists out there, so if you’re one of these journalists no harm is meant. I’m also interested in YOUR thoughts of this post, feel free to comment or email me.
- Jodie
