Journalism Ethics: Arguments and Cases for the Twenty-first Century

Journalism Ethics: Arguments and Cases for the 21st Century explores the major ethical dilemmas facing journalists in the digital age.

Engaging with both the theory and practice of journalism ethics, this text explains the key ethical concepts and dilemmas in journalism and provides an international range of examples and case studies, considering traditional and social media from a global perspective.

Journalism Ethics offers an introductory philosophical underpinning to ethics that traces the history of the freedom of expression from the time of Greek philosophers like Aristotle, through the French and American revolutions, to modern day.

Throughout the book Patching and Hirst examine ethically-challenging issues such as deception, trial by media, dealing with sources and privacy intrusion. They also explore continuing ethical fault lines around accuracy, bias, fairness and objectivity, chequebook journalism, the problems of the foreign correspondent, the conflicts between ethics and the law and between journalists and public relations consultants.

Concluding with a step-by-step guide to ethical thinking on the job, this textbook is an invaluable resource for students of journalism, media and communication.

Roger Patching has spent more than half a century in journalism and journalism education. This is the eighth journalism text he has co-authored in the past four decades. In ‘semi-retirement’, he still teaches part time at Bond University on Queensland's Gold Coast, and his doctorate on privacy invasion is nearing completion. His contribution to journalism education has been recognised with life membership of his professional association, the Journalism Education Association of Australia.
Martin Hirst has been a journalism scholar for more than 20 years. He worked as a broadcast journalist for 20 years, including a stint in the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra, Australia. He is author, co-author or editor of seven books and scores of journal articles. He is a regular commentator on media matters and currently works at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.