Editorial
Over its 20 years, Ethical Space has been a ‘journal with a difference’ – offering issues in a number of very different formats. There are the guest-edited issues on a range of important topics: for instance, radical public relations ethics; the great crash of 2008 and the crisis in journalism; UNESCO and the information society; widening ethnic diversity in journalism; re-envisioning democratic media and ethics; Australian media ethics, intelligence, the press and the ethics debate; the ethics, possibilities and challenges of not-for-profit media; and the ethics of covering vulnerable people. More recently there have been special issues on subjects as diverse as women in sport, the ethics of the journalist memoir, sports journalism, true crime, the ethics of local media across the globe, remembering Brian Winston and Indigenous communication landscapes.
Over the period 2003 to 2019 when the journal was published by the Institute of Communication Ethics, the first issue of every year was based on a selection of papers presented at the recently held annual conference of ICE. The journal from time to time has held conferences with other organisations and these have led to special issues. For instance, a special issue in 2020 on Covid-19 coverage followed an international, Zoom-based conference jointly mounted with the European Journalism Observatory.
The final format consists of a collection of papers (with no specific theme) drawn from those submitted to us on a regular basis by international scholars. The current issue follows that format. And what a wealth of original research it reveals.
Chris Frost, who has been closely associated with Ethical Space since its formation, is the UK’s leading authority on ethics and press regulation. Here he looks in forensic detail at the work of the Independent Press Standards Organisation set up in controversial circumstances following the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into press practices and ethics after the tabloid phone hacking scandal. It remains the largest press regulator in the UK chosen by the majority of national and regional publishers to protect standards. Frost is concerned with how well Ipso fulfils its major function of protecting freedom of expression by looking at the complaints to the organisation and the follow-up action. In his conclusion, Frost does not mince his words: ‘Ipso cannot claim to be a significant improvement on the PCC. Large numbers of publishers are members, but some significant national publications that used to be members of the PCC are not. Opportunities for redress for complainants are no better with Ipso and although the number of complaints are higher, examination of those complaints show little or no evidence that there has been a significant change in newspaper standards.’
Based on their experiences at a semester-long life-writing class for postgraduate students, Annmaree Watharow (who is profoundly deaf and blind through a degenerative disease) and Sue Joseph (the lecturer) explore a number of important issues: the legalities and technological needs of deafblind students in the Australian tertiary sector; how an equitable classroom space can best be created for every student, and the rights of people living with disability and seeking to learn. The authors argue that by intertwining disability researchers and people with disabilities, a united and informed team can confidently address the many problems facing disabled communities. Though the paper uses interviews conducted in 2017, the findings retain relevance (sadly) because so little has changed since then for students with deafblindness. Watharow and Joseph conclude: ‘Universities must continue to comply with their legal and moral safeguards, and fund what is needed for each student with deafblindness to learn and for academics to provide educational oversight. In this way, constructive collaborative approaches yield positive student and academic experiences and flourishing.’
Cornelia E. Brown is concerned: since Americans, she believes, cannot agree on what truth is how can they possibly spot ‘fake news’? While exploring the issue she discovered that today’s journalism ethics closely resemble ancient Jewish truth ethics. So pairing journalism ethics with Jewish wisdom stories, she developed the ‘truth check’, a technique for verifying the news and gauging its impact. Here she explains the technique and argues that the ‘truth check’ journey ‘will touch mind and heart, boosting public interest in journalism ethics and accountable news’.
David Baines, UK-based book reviews editor for Ethical Space, reflects on the implications for peace journalism of Distinctive Voices, Collective Choices, a project undertaken in post-conflict Northern Ireland in which youth workers who also possessed skills and experience as journalists helped children and young people to bridge the sectarian divide. Building on the theories of Sue Robinson (2011, 2013), Baines aims to advance understandings of peace journalism theory by focusing on journalism as a process rather than on its products. And he finds that the children who participated did, indeed, adopt the critical, questioning outlook of a journalist and engage in the processes of journalism as ethical practice. Moreover, the project, through incorporating a collaborative, community-centred approach, highlighted the ability of peace journalism to enable wider social participation in the processes of journalism and in the creation of active communities. Baines concludes: ‘This investigation provides strong evidence for the argument that the most effective peace journalism projects may be those which emerge from the grassroots.’
Next, Kristin Demetrious’s paper provides a critique of the concept of ‘communication’ in contemporary settings, arguing that new generation public relations companies hide their essential political function by their prominent use of data and establishing legitimacy through a ‘non- ideological’ representation. Drawing on theories of public language, power and politics by Jürgen Habermas (1994), Demetrious examines hybridised digital communication consortiums such as Meltwater, Cision and Onclusive: while their PR appears ‘natural’ and politically neutral it is, in fact, best seen as highly ideological. Similarly, with the growth of generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen-AI), Demetrious suggests there is a clear need to examine its inter-relationship with politics and the way this nexus serves to limit participation in the public sphere within post- neoliberal societies.
In 2010, I joined with Raphael Cohen-Almagor in composing a paper titled ‘Ethical Space: A journal with a difference’, for The Review of Communication (see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_ id=1683569) in which we spelled out the originality and value of ES, then just seven years old. Judging by emails sent to my gmail account, it still regularly attracts interest from academics. Here, Cohen-Almagor argues that Holocaust denial is, in fact, a form of hate speech and so should be banned by law. In particular, he takes issue with the views of the maverick American intellectual Noam Chomsky (now aged 95) whom he describes as a ‘free speech absolutist’. He also makes clear the distinction between Holocaust denial and Holocaust distortion – the latter acknowledges ‘aspects of the Holocaust as factual but, at the same time, it excuses, minimises or misrepresents the Holocaust’. Cohen- Almagor concludes: ‘While education undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in combating ignorance, it may not be sufficient in eradicating the denial and distortion of historical events aimed at promoting hatred and violence against targeted minorities. ... Therefore, implementing legislation to prohibit Holocaust denial is imperative.’
Over the years, Ethical Space has aimed to incorporate a range of genres: conventional academic papers (fully referenced and peer- reviewed), articles (shorter, tightly argued pieces which are not peer- reviewed), extended essays, interviews and book reviews. Susan Stos, in her first article for ES, argues that the corporate media in the United States during President Donald Trump’s tenure failed to fulfil its ethical role. She goes on to consider whether mainstream journalists were collectively afflicted by ethical fading and blindness. Whereas this phenomenon is often employed in discussing business ethics, Susan Stos considers the notion in relation to journalism.
Antonio Castillo has kept ES readers up-to-date with ethical issues relating to South American media over recent years. Here he examines the news coverage on four free-to-air television channels in Chile and argues that the excessive concentration on crime-related stories is igniting discrimination against Venezuelan and Colombian immigrants and playing into the hands of the political right. He concludes that Chilean mainstream journalism is failing to meet the professional standards of the country’s College of Journalists, the leading accreditation body of professional journalists which has repeatedly criticised its coverage of violence and crime.
Sadly, another genre ES has incorporated over the years is the tribute. In 2015, the first volume of the year followed on from the recent annual conference of the Institute of Communication Ethics which paid tribute to the work of three remarkable men: John Tulloch, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln and book reviews editor of ES, Richard Hoggart, author of the highly influential The uses of literacy (1957), and Stuart Hall, the Marxist sociologist and cultural theorist. Volume 19, No. 2 of ES was dedicated to the memory of Brian Winston, the first chair of ICE, polymath and influential theorist in so many areas: freedom of expression, documentary, media ethics and journalism practice. In this issue, we pay tribute first to John Pilger, the award- winning investigative reporter who died in December aged 84. Florian Zollmann and I both got to know John well through our collaborative work at the University of Lincoln. While always extremely critical of corporate media for promoting too often the interests of the dominant military/industrial/intelligence/media/entertainment elites, John did a lot of his most important work for the mainstream. And his death was covered widely in the international media. In contrast, the death in February 2024 of Johan Galtung, one of the most important pioneers of peace journalism, went (scandalously) largely unnoticed in the corporate media. Here we publish a moving recollection by Jake Lynch, whom many of us will remember attending ICE conferences with his partner, Annabel McGoldrick, and who collaborated with Johan on a number of peace journalism projects.