ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a mindset for our ongoing media revolution, avoiding static, dualistic principles. It argues that the construction of digital, global journalism ethics begins with the adoption of a new mindset for ethics in general and journalism ethics in particular. The mindset of pragmatic humanism proposes that digital, global journalism ethics be discursive in method, imperfectionist and non-dualistic in epistemology, and integrationist in developing new ethical content. Pragmatic humanism is a holistic set of notions of three kinds: functional notions about the nature and aims of journalism; epistemic notions about the nature and justification of ethical claims; structural notions about how to organize new ethical beliefs into new codes. The mindset rejects pre-digital ideas of journalism ethics as primarily fixed content, absolutist and dualistic in epistemology, and de-personal in developing new ethical content. The old mindset of Western pre-digital ethics continues to influence ethical thinking, long after the emergence of digital media.
