ABSTRACT
Chapter 16: Dialectic in action: Revisiting key issues in ethics: In this chapter we will explore several current and active fault lines in journalism ethics using some of the methods for dialectical reasoning set out in the previous chapters. Our purpose in doing this is to demonstrate where we see problems with the epistemology and ontology of journalism and how thinking dialectically helps to unpack the issues in a more productive way. The topics chosen for this chapter all link together and form the backbone of journalistic ideology today. Our review starts with the concept of objectivity because for perhaps a century or so it has been a central element in ethical schemas. We then move on to a discussion of press freedom—or, more commonly, freedom of the press—which has a long and storied history. From there we transition to a discussion of the Fourth Estate which signifies journalists’ self-perception that they are the last ones protecting democracy and the public interest from the predations of the powerful and unscrupulous. Using the dialectical and materialist method discussed earlier, we will set out the basic working model for each concept as currently operating and then offer a critique that takes us beneath the surface appearance to reveal the inner relations that activate the dialectic and set in motion the antinomes of the contradiction animating it as an ethical fault line. Here we are once again using dialectic in the double sense explained in the previous chapters as both a method of investigation and as a term defining the process of movement towards change embedded in the object being investigated.
