Media Morality in a Postmodern Era: A Model for Ethics Restoration in the Mass Media Harbor Kingsley Okoro* Jacksonville State University, USA *Correspondence to: Kingsley O. Harbor, Professor and Head, Department of Communication, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, AL 36265. E-mail: kharbor@jsu.edu
Online published on 12 September, 2016. Abstract This paper develops a chronology of milestones in mass media ethics from inception to contemporary times, demonstrating that media ethics has been on the decline throughout mass media's history. As a response to the continual decline of ethics in the mass media, this paper proposes a model for restoring ethics to the mass media. The model has four corner stones: (i) journalism and mass communication curricular revision, (ii) student entry placement, (iii) revised training for future journalists, and (iv) journalistic de-collectivization, a term used by this author to describe the act of shielding a journalist from the impact of corporate culture in the newsroom. Essential theoretical frameworks guiding the model include Kohlberg's moral development theory and Patterson and Wilkins's ethical news values. Top Keywords Media ethics, post modernism, Lawrence Kohlberg, moral development theory, ethics restoration. Top |