ABSTRACT
Western ethics starts, and often ends, with considerations founded on the individual as moral agent. In media ethics, responsibility is often accounted to an editor, writer, producer, or media user. If one or more of these actors would only do the right thing, the moral climate of public life would move an upward notch. This essay situates moral accountability in the relationship between persons, in the mutuality shared by all persons, in effect, in the public sphere itself. But not in a grey-dark ether, beyond investigation. Persons are shaped in relationships; in relationships we find our moral grounding.
