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A Better Death in a Digital Age: Post Publishing Office Aims and scope Abramis Academic ASK House Communication ethics is a discipline that supports communication Northgate Avenue practitioners by offering tools and analyses for the understanding of Bury St. Edmunds ethical issues. Moreover, the speed of change in the dynamic information Suffolk environment presents new challenges, especially for communication IP32 6BB practitioners. UK Tel: +44 (0)1284 700321 Ethics used to be a specialist subject situated within schools of philosophy. Fax: +44 (0)1284 717889 Today it is viewed as a language and systematic thought process available Email: [email protected] to everyone. It encompasses issues of care and trust, social responsibility and Web: www.abramis.co.uk environmental concern and identifies the values necessary to balance the demands of performance today with responsibilities tomorrow. Copyright All rights reserved. No part For busy professionals, CE is a powerful learning and teaching approach that of this publication may be reproduced in any mate- encourages analysis and engagement with many constituencies, enhancing rial form (including pho- relationships through open-thinking. It can be used to improve organization tocopying or storing it in performance as well as to protect individual well-being. any medium by electronic means, and whether or not transiently or incidentally Submissions to some other use of this Papers should be submitted to the Editor via email. Full details on submission – publication) without the along with detailed notes for authors – are available online in PDF format: written permission of the www.communication-ethics.net copyright owner, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Subscription Information Designs and Patents Act Each volume contains 4 issues, issued quarterly. Enquiries regarding 1988, or under terms of a subscriptions licence issued by the Copy- and orders both in the UK and overseas should be sent to: right Licensing Agency Ltd, 33-34, Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP, UK. Applications Journals Fulfilment Department for the copyright owner’s Abramis Academic, ASK House, Northgate Avenue, Bury St. Edmunds, permission to reproduce Suffolk IP32 6BB, UK. part of this publication Tel: +44 (0)1284 700321, Fax: +44 (0)1284 717889 should be addressed to the Email: [email protected] Publishers. Your usual suscription agency will also be able to take a subscription to Back issues Ethical Space. Back issues are available from the Publishers at the above editorial address. Annual Subscription Membership of the Institute of Communication Ethics includes a subscription © 2013 Institute of to the journal. Please see the application form on the last page of this Communication Ethics & issue. Abramis Academic For non-members: ISSN 1742-0105 Institutional subscription £200.00 ISBN 978-1-84549-570-1 Personal subscription £55.00 Printed in the UK. Delivery by surface mail. Airmail prices available on request or at the journal’s web site. www.communication-ethics.net Contents Editorial: The lessons of Leveson - Richard Lance Keeble Page 2 Special ICE conference issue: After Leveson? ‘A little bit Salem’: Rebekah Brooks, of News International, and the construction of a modern witch – by John Tulloch Page 4 Leveson: Solution or symptom? Class, crisis and the degradation of civil life – by John Steel Page 8 Leveson online: A publicly reported inquiry – by Judith Townend Page 14 A better death in a digital age: Post-Leveson indicators for more responsible reporting of the bereaved – by Sallyanne Duncan and Jackie Newton Page 22 Journalism education after Leveson: Ethics start where regulation ends – by David Baines and Darren Kelsey Page 29 Other papers Black Saturday bushfires and the question of consent – by Denis Muller Page 36 Aesthetics and power: From the perspective of communication ethics – by Leon Miller Page 43 Book review James Stanyer’s Intimate politics (Polity) reviewed by Raphael Cohen-Almagor Page 52 Obituary essay John Tulloch looks back on the life and works of Gitta Sereny: ‘the journalist who dared to grapple with evil’ Page 54 Editorial Board Joint Editors Paul Jackson Manchester Business School Richard Lance Keeble University of Lincoln Mike Jempson Director, MediaWise Trust Donald Matheson University of Canterbury, New Zealand Cheris Kramarae University of Oregon; Centre for Shannon Bowen University of South Carolina the Study of Women in Society Takeshi Maezawa Former Yomiuri ombudsman, Reviews Editors scholar/writer Mary Griffiths University of Adelaide John Mair Coventry University John Tulloch University of Lincoln Ian Mayes Former Guardian Readers’ Editor Tessa Mayes Investigative Journalist Editorial board members Jolyon Mitchell University of Edinburgh Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen Catholic University Fuad Nahdi Publisher Q-news; Producer Channel 4 Eichstaett-Ingolstadt Sarah Niblock Brunel University Raphael Alvira University of Navarra Kaarle Nordenstreng Tampere University Dusan Babic Media plan, Sarajevo Manuel Parez i Maicas Universitat Autonoma Porfiro Barroso Computense University of Madrid & de Barcelona Pontifical University of Salamanca, Madrid Ian Richards University of South Australia, Adelaide Jay Black Editor, Journal of Mass Media Ethics Simon Rogerson De Montfort University Antonio Castillo University of Western Sydney Lorna Roth Concordia University, Montreal Contact: Institute of Ruth Chadwick Lancaster University Karen Sanders San Pablo University, Madrid Communication Ethics, C/O Dr Fiona Thompson, Saviour Chircop University of Malta John Strain Unversity of Surrey 69 Glenview Road, Clifford Christians University of Illinois-Urbana, USA Miklos Sukosd Central European University, Budapest Shipley, West Yorkshire, Raphael Cohen–Almagor University of Hull Barbara Thomass Ruhruniversität Bochum BD18 4AR, UK Tom Cooper Emerson College, Boston, MA Terry Threadgold Centre for Journalism Studies, Deni Elliott University of Montana Cardiff University Published by: The Institute Chris Frost Liverpool John Moores University Stephen J. Ward University of British Columbia of Communication Ethics (www.communication-ethics.net) Ted Glasser Stanford University Brian Winston University of Lincoln and Abramis Academic Anne Gregory Leeds Metropolitan University James Winter University of Windsor, Canada (www.abramis.co.uk) Cees Hamelink University of Amsterdam EDITORIAL BOARD & CONTENTS Copyright 2012-4. Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. All rights reserved. Vol 9, No 4 2012 1 EDITORIAL The richness of the debate on press standards promoted by ICE was certainly in full view at the annual conference at the Frontline Club, London, on 25 October 2011. This issue of Ethical Space carries a selection of the papers. Firstly, John Tulloch focuses, with typical flare and originality, on the media hounding of Rebekah Brooks, former CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Beyond Leveson International. He writes: Since its formation ten years ago, the Institute Last year, Rebekah Brooks positively willed of Communication Ethics (the publisher of herself to be my subject. She is, as many Ethical Space) has been committed to expanding have seen fit to tell us, hard to resist. Not the the debate over media standards. It is a broad Cotswold-living lady who rides retired police church: some of its members believe strongly that horses, or the tabloid editor and compulsive a regulatory system underpinned by legislation is chum of celebrities, or the CEO of News needed to bring an unruly mainstream national International, the erstwhile ‘most powerful press to order. Others (on both the political woman in British media’. But the woman in left and right) believe equally strongly that any the middle of the bizarre process that seems attempt to legislate on press standards seriously to happen regularly, when, for a short period, threatens the freedom of the press. they become a subject of press interest, are objectified and, not be too dainty about it, Some members even consider the whole Leveson monstered. debate a distraction which (like all previous attempts to reform the press – whether through Tulloch argues that studying this ‘monstering’ Royal Commission, committee inquiry, Press is important since it is but one example of the Council or Press Complaints Commission) is likely way in which the ‘press reflects one of the most to have little impact. Indeed, perhaps the Leveson persisting sources of inequality that we negotiate Inquiry is best understood as largely spectacular day by day: the differential construction of theatre – too trapped within the system it images of men and women’. is attempting to reform to have any lasting effect. Is it not simply providing the illusion of Next John Steel argues that the Leveson process moral intent by the state and its propaganda was flawed since it failed to address deeper institutions – the leading media corporations systemic and structural issues which have – when, in reality, the system is run on ruthless contributed to the crisis not only in journalism profit-oriented principles? but in public life itself. Steel writes: Significantly, Leveson’s priorities and those Rehabilitating the press is not only currently of the mainstream media covering it have unfeasible, as numerous inquiries and royal reflected dominant values and sourcing routines: commissions have demonstrated, but attempts celebrities, leading journalists, proprietors to force the popular press to behave in ways and politicians have dominated proceedings which run counter to their
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