[...]... when it comes to access to information The general laws of the land and the peculiarities of the constitution do not exhaust the legal controls over the British media Broadcasting is subject to a number of statutory licensing and regulating bodies, including the Independent Television Commission, the Radio Authority, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the Broadcasting Standards Council This system... court In addition to the laws themselves there is the problem of a judiciary generally unsympathetic to the ideas of a free press and freedom of information Ethics and politics of the media 5 and firmly wedded to prior restraint through the use of interlocutory (‘gagging’) injunctions, a legal move virtually impossible in the United States But there is nothing obscure about the difference between the. .. the ethical examination of professional practice in journalism and the media We should like to thank the contributors for the speedy and efficient way in which they responded to our invitation to take part in this project, and for their calmness when faced with subsequent editorial demands Andrew Belsey and Ruth Chadwick Cardiff, 27 January 1992 Ethics and politics of the media 1 Chapter 1 Ethics and. .. supplies the diversity of opinion and access to information that a citizenry requires in order to act in a democratic, responsible manner The free market, journalism and democracy form an interdependent trinity of institutions in an open society This liberal economic position has been prominent in recent debates concerning the First Amendment in the United States and the recent deregulation of the media in. .. Europe.2 In this paper I will attempt to prise these institutions apart I will argue that, while journalism as a practice does have a necessary role in democratic societies, the market undermines the relation between journalism and democracy There is a tension between the internal goals of journalism and the market contexts in which it operates; and the market inhibits the dissemination of information and. .. However, in the following section, I argue that the goods of journalism are in tension with the requirements of the market place, and that the market place, far from providing an institutional arrangement in which the needs of democracy are served, is in conflict with them While the practice of journalism and the needs of democracy are well suited to each other, the market is a friend of neither I finish... the topics that could be discussed under the heading of ethical issues in journalism and the media There is still much more to say about freedom of expression and censorship in general, together with practical proposals for achieving more democratic structures within the media themselves, so that they can better serve the ends of democracy on a global scale, which should be their central concern Other... several reasons, including the charge that the bodies have unclear and overlapping jurisdictions The Broadcasting Complaints Commission, for instance, is supposed to deal with complaints concerning matters such as lack of factual accuracy, unfairness in presentation and intrusions into privacy, whereas the Broadcasting Standards Council deals with alleged offences against taste and decency in the areas of... with principles concerning the rights and wrongs of human conduct, principles which have some reasoned theoretical basis and which therefore apply objectively and impartially Of course, this is not the same as saying that we know what these principles are: the search for them and their refinement will continue as long as human beings survive to debate and argue; but it is precisely the reasoned and democratic... diversity of the press does not always reflect the diversity of a population Thus, for example, the decline of the radical press in the UK has been a consequence not of a decline in readers—readership has sometimes increased during periods of decline— Ethical issues journalism and the media 20 but rather of the lack of advertising revenue.28 Likewise those minority groups which lack significant purchasing power . and freedom of information have arisen in connection with Spycatcher, the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland and the wars in the Falklands and. If the proper role of journalism is seen as providing information, then the ethical questions focus on one issue: maintaining the quality of the information.