Notes on Duties and Ethics Reasoning and on the Role-Based Duties of Journalists

A process for ethics decision-making*

I. Start with a core commitment to achieving the ethically best choice, even if that doesn’t necessarily coincide with the prudentially best choice.

II. The ethically best choice can never involve gratuitously harming another, nor can it treat persons as a mere object – see below for details.

III. Strive for the choice that best achieves a convergence among:  Best outcomes (i.e., those that create aggregate benefit over harm, with sufficient attention to defining those key terms – see below);  Character promotion (i.e., choices that serve to reinforce one’s position as a person of honor, worthy of emulation – see below); and  Satisfaction of key ethical principles (general and role-based – see below).

IV. Some details: 1. “Aggregate benefit” is typically defined as outcomes that, in totality, increase pleasure and opportunity, while reducing pain and oppression. 2. “Character” is a bit more slippery, with theorists typically talking about “those actions a person of integrity would take” (e.g., “What would Gandhi do?”). Such persons promote virtue – in words and actions – while reducing vice. Furthermore, character serves as a backdrop and a motivator to right behavior. Persons with good character want to be ethical and to strive to get it right. The more they do that, the more it becomes habit, to the point where, at least on easy questions, one doesn’t have to think about the right thing to do, one just does it. 3. Principles:  General principles are those that, it turns out, nearly all mature adults recognize as having moral force – at least in abstraction. A full list is below, but think of them in terms of “don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal…” i.e., those rules we intuitively know. The hardest part is determining which should prevail in any given situation – see the “steps,” below.  Those general principles take on special importance within the various roles we inhabit in life. For example, lawyers have an exaggerated duty of fidelity (toward client), engineers to honesty, nurses to beneficence, and police officers to formal justice. As subsets of the general duties, they routinely come into conflict with one another and with the general duties. The knee-jerk response is to say a particular role-based duty should always trump (e.g., a counselor may never violate confidentiality, unless the law requires doing so [Tarasoff]); one must, however, engage in the same careful reasoning process in all conflicts to try to determine the better choices. 4. The list of principles can vary somewhat, but nearly all look something like the following:  Strict duties – those than can never be ethically violated – include: 1. Gratuitous harm: It is always wrong to cause gratuitous harm, i.e., harm that has no moral justification, that is, e.g., done only for the fun of it. 2. Dignity: It is always wrong to treat persons as a mere means, as an object for the fulfillment of some other goal. Doing so strips them of all moral dignity. Difficulties arise in determining who counts as a “person” and what counts as strict objectification, but in those clear-cut cases, violation of this principle is always wrong. General duties (often called prima facie duties) include: 1. Fidelity: Keep promises, whether explicit, or when any reasonable person would interpret one’s actions and circumstances as implying such a vow. 2. Reparation: Effect repair for harms caused to others, whether directly (e.g., fixing, or paying to have fixed, the actual damage) or indirectly (e.g., providing cash restitution). The duty of reparation must also be divided between those harms caused intentionally or through gross negligence and those resulting from stupidity or carelessness – i.e., the former are obviously more compelling. 3. Non-Maleficence: Avoid causing harm to others, including physical, reputational, psychological, emotional, and economic harm. Causing harm can be morally justified, but there must be a sufficient balance, e.g., more good will be produced or justice demands it. 4 Respect for persons: Treat all persons as free beings whose moral autonomy must be honored. Since true autonomy depends on adequate information, this principle provides the moral grounding for such norms as informed consent and the right to know key information about our institutions of power. The principle also places constraints on professionals not to use others—e.g., clients and colleagues— as tools for personal gain, for example, via unwarranted treatment or invasions of privacy. As importantly, the principle of respect entails holding persons —including oneself—accountable for free choices. 5. Formal justice: Give to persons what they have legitimately earned and apply corresponding social structures (laws, civil rights) in an unbiased manner, i.e., in a manner that takes into account only relevant factors, not arbitrary ones. The obvious application of this principle is via justice systems, but it also carries across to social benefits, like those attached to recognized marriage covenants. Hence treating an arbitrary factor, like one’s sexual orientation, as relevant to receipt of such benefits would be a violation of the duty of justice. 6. Beneficence: Do what you reasonably can to improve the situation of others. 7. Gratitude: Show appreciation for others’ actions that benefit you. Appreciation can range from mere expressions of thankfulness to gifting in a manner comparable to the good provided. 8. Distributive justice: Distribute social goods in a manner that both protects liberty and provides the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. 9. Honesty: Maintain a commitment not to knowingly and intentionally communicate in a way that results in others believing information you consider to be false. As per Sissela Bok (1999, pp. 13–16), deceptive communication can fall along the continuum of overt and malicious, to covert and done with the goal of aiding or preventing harm to others, to self- deception. 10. Self-improvement: Strive to improve oneself, morally, intellectually and physically. In other words, we have a duty to develop our character in a manner that would facilitate moral discernment and steadfastness, while striving for healthy, well-functioning bodies.

V. Recommended steps to follow in trying to determine which principles should prevail and whether you have more likely achieved the noted convergence:  Determine the facts, especially the morally relevant facts; i.e., determine what is at stake and how those stakes will be impacted by available options. Note you cannot do this adequately unless you have a sufficiently rich understanding of organizational culture and its impact on participants’ beliefs and values.  Do those facts reveal a violation of either of the strict duties? If so, stop those actions immediately and seek alternatives. If not,  Determine what type of conflict it is. If it is a case of moral distress, wherein you know the right answer but power structures or the law or bureaucracy prevent you from acting accordingly, do what you can to level the playing field. This will often entail bringing in another person with power (e.g., an independent ethicist) who can advocate for the right choice. If it is a classic dilemma of competing principles – i.e., one in which any choice will violate one or more of the principles, cause harm, and make it hard to be virtuous – proceed to the next steps.  Determine who will be impacted by potential choices; i.e., determine who is at stake and how they will be affected by available options. Note this includes some consideration of the relationships among the various players. What sorts of factors are present in the situation that could serve to undercut the moral goals of that relationship? E.g., are there power problems, bias problems or conflicts of interest?  Determine what general or role-based principles are involved.  Determine the extent to which principles are involved; e.g., would a particular decision involve a serious violation of a principle or just a minor one?  Determine how the principles are in tension or conflict with one another.  Determine which answer promotes the principle(s) that you decide, to your best, sincere ability and judgment, should be respected in this case. To get this answer, you will very likely have to use moral imagination, i.e., to think outside the box, so as to come up with creative choices that best enhance the moral principles.  Determine what obligations, if any, emerge as a corollary to your decision. For example, if you decide that you must harm someone so as to respect an obligation of fidelity toward another, do you now have an obligation to try to repair that harm? You must also determine whether aspects of the organizational culture would inhibit or even prevent the effective promotion of what you've decided to be the actual duty.

VI. The escape clause: You are not morally perfect; you will make mistakes. Why? Because you are also not omniscient – you do not always have the relevant facts, nor can you always predict likely outcomes. In simpler terms, ethics reasoning is very hard work. Part of what it means to be a person of character, though, is to take on that work and do the very best we can. And if we do, it is not reasonable to hold us blameworthy or accountable when genuine mistakes occur.

*This process represents a melding of approaches developed by Dan Wueste, from the Rutland Institute of Ethics at Clemson University, and Christopher Meyers, from the Kegley Institute of Ethics at CSU Bakersfield.