Questions To Help You Make Good Decisions

Contemporary ethicists, including media scholars, have come up with various tools to help journalists make good ethical decisions. Here are a few. Use any of these that make sense to you; combine elements if you like!

Although they are not identical, all share common components:

* They involve a rational step-by-step process, urging you to work thoughtfully through difficult ethical questions rather than going with what seems right off the top of your head (or in your gut).

* Closely related: They involve reaching a decision that can be explained adequately to others, such as your sources, your readers and the world at large. If your decision only makes sense to other people in the newsroom, it's probably not a great decision.

Ask yourself this SERIES OF QUESTIONS, in this order, when facing an ethical choice:

 

1) What are the MORALLY RELEVANT FACTORS?

a) Will the SPECIFIC action that you are considering cause an evil?
b) Does the TYPE of action that you are considering GENERALLY cause an evil?

If NO to both, there's no ethical problem here.

If YES to either, keep going through ALL the rest of the questions.

2) Is a greater evil being PREVENTED or PUNISHED?
3) Are YOU in a UNIQUE POSITION to prevent or punish the evil?
4) If you take the action you are considering, would you be allowing yourself to be an EXCEPTION TO A RULE you would want everyone else to follow?
5) Would a rational, uninvolved person APPRECIATE YOUR REASON for causing harm? (And can you clearly articulate that reason outside the newsroom?)

If you answer "YES" to questions 2, 3 and 5, and "NO" to question 4 -- run the story!

(These questions are from Deni Elliott, currently the Poynter Jamison Chair in Media Ethics and Press Policy at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg.)

Go through this series of steps, asking yourself the related questions at each step, when facing an ethical choice. Each step will broaden your view of the situation and the options available to you.

STEP ONE: Consult your conscience.

RELATED QUESTION: How do I feel about this?

STEP TWO: Seek expert advice for alternatives.

RELATED QUESTION: What are my alternatives?

STEP THREE: Conduct a public ethical dialogue with all of the parties involved (the stakeholders).

RELATED QUESTION: How will my action affect others?

If you satisfy yourself (be honest!), your respected experts and the outside stakeholders -- run the story!

(These questions are from Sissela Bok, a Harvard philosopher and prolific ethics author.)

This one was designed to help journalists make decisions about whether it is ethical to lie (or engage in some other form of deception) in order to obtain a story. But the questions work well for considering whether to run almost any potentially problematic story.

Deception may be acceptable for journalists but only as a LAST RESORT, when all other alternatives have truly been ruled out.When have you arrived at that last resort? Perhaps if you can honestly agree with all these statements about the problem your story deals with:

The problem is PERVASIVE and SYSTEMIC (meaning it is part of the way the system normally works rather than a rare incident).

The problem is SIGNIFICANT.

The problem demands an URGENT SOLUTION.
The problem demands MEDIA ATTENTION.
You are prepared to tell the public what you did and why you did it -- that is, to be ACCOUNTABLE.

If you can honestly say that the situation covered in the story meets all those criteria -- run the story!

(These criteria come from Ed Lambeth, a professor emeritus with the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia and currently director of the Center for Religion, the Profession and the Public, housed at MU.)
This one is usually presented in the form of a box (the Potter Box), but it's basically a set of steps in a decision-making process. The sequence here is more important than it is in the previous guidelines; you should go through the steps in this order. Note that choosing among loyalties is the final, and often the most difficult, step.

DEFINE the SITUATION
* What do you know about it?
* What don't you know?
* What alternatives do you have?
* What are the likely consequences of your decision?

IDENTIFY YOUR VALUES
What is important or valuable to you, both personally (as a human being) and professionally (as a journalist).

APPLY ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
This is where the ethical approaches (for instance, following your duty or doing what is best for the most people) come in handy. Challenge yourself to apply more than one principle, though, or you may miss the best solution.
CHOOSE AMONG YOUR LOYALTIES
We all have multiple loyalties, again as both human beings and as journalists. For journalists, loyalty to the public often comes first ... but sometimes, competing loyalties (to a particular source, for instance, or to the victim of a crime) may take precedence. You also may be loyal to particular ideals, such as telling the truth.


(This tool is from Ralph Potter of the Harvard University Divinity School. He is an emeritus professor of social ethics at Harvard.)