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Media Ethics and Justice in the Age of Globalization This page intentionally left blank Media Ethics and Justice in the Age of Globalization Edited by Shakuntala Rao State University of New York, USA Herman Wasserman University of Cape Town, South Africa Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Shakuntala Rao and Herman Wasserman 2015 Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015 Foreword © Nick Couldry 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-49825-0 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-50520-3 ISBN 978-1-137-49826-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137498267 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents Foreword by Nick Couldry ix Notes on Contributors x 1 Introduction 1 Shakuntala Rao and Herman Wasserman Global media ethics: Thick or thin? 4 Justice in global media ethics: Sen’s approach 9 Themes of the book 16 2 The Moral Priority of Globalism in a Media-Saturated World 23 Stephen J. A. Ward Parochialism and globalism 24 Normative parochialism and globalism 25 Cosmopolitanism and anti-cosmopolitanism 26 Cosmopolitanism 26 Anti-cosmopolitanism and nationalism 28 Criticisms and rebuttals 29 Universalism and ‘local’ ethics 29 The ‘global minimum’ strategy 31 The disanalogy arguments 34 The tolerance arguments 37 Globalism and media 38 Conclusion 40 3 Global Justice and Civil Society 43 Clifford G. Christians Justice as right order 44 Philosophical anthropology and justice 48 Augustine 48 Hannah Arendt 50 Contemporary notations 51 Primary justice and civil society 52 v vi Contents India 53 Conclusion 55 4 Social Justice and Citizenship in South Africa: The Media’s Role 59 Herman Wasserman Media, marginalization, and citizenship in South Africa 61 Normative frameworks and contestations 65 A proposed response 69 What would this mean in practice? 73 Conclusion 75 5 Paying for Journalism: An Ethics-Based and Collaborative Business Model 80 Lee Wilkins Definitions 82 Reciprocity: The obligations of affirmative duties 83 Collaboration and justice as capabilities 89 A template for financial collaboration with journalists 91 Changing the relationship between journalists and sources: Crowdsourcing 94 Does the financial template inform reality? 97 Collaboration with government: Important boundary work for crowdsourcing 98 6 News for Sale: ‘Paid News’, Media Ethics, and India’s Democratic Public Sphere 100 Vipul Mudgal Political communication, mediation, and passive publics 102 Lobbyists, spin artists, and some willing collaborators 107 Professionalism and public interest as defense mechanisms 108 The exposés and other responses to ‘paid news’ in India 111 In lieu of conclusion: Ethics in the times of hi-tech pluralism and digital public sphere 113 7 Practices of Indian Journalism: Justice, Ethics, and Globalization 121 Shakuntala Rao Sen’s interpretative use of nyaya 122 Nyaya and ananya in Indian journalism practices 126 Contents vii The use (and abuse) of hidden cameras 127 Uneven injustices: Coverage of crime 131 Nyaya in global media ethics 133 8 Justice as an Islamic Journalistic Value and Goal 139 Muhammad I. Ayish Justice in global media ethics debates 140 Justice: An Islamic perspective 143 Justice as a journalistic value and a social goal 146 Justice in the professional context 147 Justice in the social action context 147 Justice as a journalistic value in modern Arab journalism 148 Conclusion 151 9 Rammohun Roy’s Idea of ‘Public Good’ in the Early Days of Journalism Ethics in India 155 Prasun Sonwalkar Introduction 155 The context and origins of print journalism 158 Rammohun Roy and his journalism 163 Conclusion 171 10 The Chief and the Channels: How Satellite Television Sparked a Social Movement for the ‘Rule of Law’ that Is Restructuring Political Power in Pakistan 174 Shahan Mufti An old institutional imbalance 175 The military and judiciary faceoff 177 A history of television in Pakistan 179 Challenges of ethics and regulation of private television 181 The civilian government learns the new rules of the game 185 The evolution continues 187 Conclusion 189 11 The Changing Structure of Media and Ethics in India 194 Bharat Bhushan Factors that drive the media 196 Market expansion 197 Changing role of the editor 200 viii Contents Neo-liberal consensus between the state, corporate sector, and media 202 Internal value structure of the media 202 Restructuring to generate new revenue streams and its impact on media ethics 204 Conclusion 207 Index 210 Foreword This book is published at a time when three major new horizons for research and public culture across the world are opening up. The first is the changing nature of the media environment on a global scale. The second is the growth among media researchers, and also among general citizens across the world, about the ethics and morality of media as well as media’s role in public and private culture. This new urgency to nor- mative debate about media will not be satisfied by a replaying of an older media ‘ethics lite’ that replays the journalistic rule book, as Shakuntala Rao and Herman Wasserman make clear in their Introduction. It is a question instead of challenging the principles and limits of that old rule book and insisting that citizens, not just professional journalists, have both rights and responsibilities in relation to the media environment that all of us, potentially, are now involved in shaping. A third and more specific horizon is the new debate about injustice, that is, about the legal, political, and philosophical frameworks through which we can think about justice and injustice in relation to media processes and media resources. This debate has been opened up and inspired by Amartya Sen’s recent work on injustice and his challeng- ing of the dominance of John Rawls’ maximalist model for working out what a just society is that, through its excessive complexity and elabo- ration, had come to block new work in applied areas such as the justice or injustice in media. This book is important because it addresses all three intersecting hori- zons. In doing so, it gathers a new readership of activists, citizens, and media and communications researchers and points us all in the direc- tion of a sustained and theoretically informed debate about whether media institutions can be different, and specifically more just, and how we can build campaigns to that end most effectively. I am delighted to have been asked to provide a foreword to this important book. Nick Couldry London School of Economics ix Contributors Muhammad I. Ayish received his PhD from the University of Minnesota, USA, and is Professor of Mass Communication at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. He was previously Dean of Communication at the University of Sharjah (2002–2008). He has over 75 articles and book chapters published internationally in addition to four books, the most recent being Explorations in Global Media Ethics (co-edited with Shakuntala Rao, 2012). His research interests include media ethics, Arab media, media convergence, and media and cultural identity. Bharat Bhushan is a senior academic consultant with the Indian Coun- cil of Social Science Research, New Delhi, India. He has been a journalist for over 25 years and was the founding editor of Mail Today. Earlier, he was the executive editor of the Hindustan Times, editor of The Telegraph, editor of the Express News Service, Washington correspondent of The Indian Express, and assistant editor with The Times of India. He was edu- cated at Imperial College London, UK; Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum; and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. He has written for The Straits Times (Singapore), The Daily Times (Pakistan), The Kathmandu Post (Nepal), Outlook magazine, Index on Censorship, and The BRICS Post. He is a columnist for The Asian Age and Business Standard newspapers besides hosting a weekly television program on foreign affairs, titled ‘India’s World’. Clifford G. Christians is Research Professor of Communications, Professor of Media Studies, and Professor of Journalism Emeritus, Insti- tute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, USA. He is the author/co-author of Ethics for Public Com- munication; Good News: Social Ethics and the Press; Normative Theories of the Media; Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning (9th edition); Moral Engagement in Public Life: Theories for Contemporary Ethics; Communication Ethics and Universal Values; and Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies.

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