ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that human rights should play a major role in the construction of a global media ethics, an ethics that transcends parochial journalism norms and practices. It envisages a global media ethics with human rights expressing many of its core principles. The chapter focuses on developing an appropriate conception of human rights for an ethics of global news media, a conception called contractual naturalism. It also argues that the ethics of pre-digital journalism, which historically has been parochial, needs to be reconstructed as a digital, global ethics. The chapter examines how parochial journalism ethics has prioritised nation-based political rights yet has struggled to deal adequately with human rights. It then shows how such a conception can be used to construct a global ethics that takes human flourishing as its ultimate aim. The emergence of global news media raises serious questions about the adequacy of a journalism ethics developed for a non-global media.
