A journalism of care

Debates on ethics are nothing new for journalism. Indeed, many of the foundational discussions around objectivity that characterized the ‘high modern’ period of journalism (Hallin, 1992), especially in the Anglo-American context, centred around the value and necessity of such ideal forms of conduct. Notions that came to act as industry-wide technical and discursive standards, such as factuality, fairness, non-bias, independence, non-interpretation, neutrality and detachment, were also rhetorical claims whose ethical underpinnings helped establish and defend journalism as a profession and practice (Ward, 2005). Against this more familiar backdrop, this chapter explores an alternative ethos, that of a ‘journalism of care’, to articulate a vision of journalism that sets its underpinnings not in abstract truths, but in its relevance to the public.