Ethics for Public Communication

Focusing on one historic episode per chapter,Ethics for Public Communicationis divided into three parts, each dedicated to one of the three major functions of the media within democratic societies: news, persuasion, and entertainment. Authors Clifford Christians, Mark Fackler, and John Ferr, three trusted scholars in the field, discuss media ethics from a communicative perspective, setting the book apart from other texts in the market that simply combine journalism with libertarian theory. Classic media ethics cases, like the publication of Rachel Carson's 1962 bookSilentSpring, are covered in tandem with such contemporary cases as the creation of Al-Jazeera English and the controversy surrounding Ice-T's protest song, "Cop Killer." FEATURES -A new "communitarian" approach to ethicsthat breaks from other texts in the discipline -A focus on classic and current casesthat are culturally relevant today -A thorough and comprehensive grounding in the theory of media ethics -Longer and more universal case studies than those included in other texts, in order to provide more real-life, ethical dilemmas

Clifford G. Christians is Research Professor of Communications Emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana. Mark Fackler is Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. John P. Ferr is Professor of Communication and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville. Their first book on communitarian ethics, Good News: Social Ethics and the Press (1993), was published by Oxford University Press.