ABSTRACT
Chapter 17: Rebuilding trust in journalism: An ethical imperative: Journalism ethics is at a crossroads, and serious scholars are beginning to recognise the epistemological and ontological crisis in journalism studies. Today there is almost universal agreement among both producers and consumers of news that trust in journalism and journalists is declining. The question that it seems nobody has yet been able to answer is: How are we going to fix it? In this book we have argued that the answer lies in a close examination of the social relations of news production using the methods outlined in the previous chapters. Our basic proposition, illustrated with arguments and examples, is that the crisis of trust is system wide and system deep. The news industry cannot fix the problem because it is the problem. In this chapter we want to be a bit more positive and discuss how trust between journalists and audiences can be restored. Restoring trust in journalism, so that it can effectively reclaim the mantle as a force for democratic change, requires a root and branch rethink. It cannot be wished into being by the well-meaning and philanthropic groups of news insiders. This chapter ranges from Immanuel Kant to the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to discuss the differences between common sense and scientific reasoning. This chapter also concludes our discussion of objectivity by arguing that it is misapplied in its current formulation. This discussion—of objectivity versus subjectivity—is used to highlight our argument that the ideology of journalism has been stuck in a commonsense approach for too long—exemplified by the collapse of objectivity and balance as workable ethical propositions. Our conclusions point to a very different way of thinking about journalism that leads to the concept of standpoint ethics and journalists recognising the importance of taking the side of the dispossessed against the powerful. We conclude the chapter and the book with a call for journalists to use the crisis as an opportunity to undertake a revolutionary review of their core values and functions.
