Media Ethics and Accountability Systems

Over the last few years, the O.J. Simpson case, then the Lewinsky-Clinton affair, and scores of minor scandals have dominated the U.S. press, often taking precedence over important domestic and international issues. Tabloidization of the news media, both here and abroad, proves that "the market" cannot insure media quality. For media to function well in a democracy, they must be free of both political and economic muzzling. Bertrand argues the only solution is to add self-regulation, or quality control, by professionals and public to market and state regulation. In this controversial volume, he defines a set of accountability systems -- democratic, efficient, and harmless -- to insure true freedom and quality of media.This brief, highly literate volume focuses on what is missing in the philosophical foundations of media ethics. Media Ethics and Accountability Systems zeroes in on the many nongovernmental methods of enforcing "quality control", and on the difficulty of getting the media microcosm to accept such accountability. Bertrand proposes rethinking existing "media accountability systems" and creation of new ones. He observes that existing systems are rooted in four basic approaches: training: education of citizens in media use incorporating ethics courses in journalistic education; evaluation: criticism (positive and negative) not only from politicians, consumerists, and intellectuals, but from media professionals themselves; monitoring: by independent, academic experts over extended periods of time; and feedback: giving ear to the various segments of media users and their needs and tastes, rather than sales and ratings.Media Ethics will be of particular interest toacademics in the fields of communication and journalism, as well as to the general reader with an interest in public issues and a civic concern for society.

Claude-Jean Bertrand is professor emeritus, Institut Francais de Presse Universite de Paris-2.