User:Cblack1298/Communication ethics

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Being an ethical communicator is defined as being honest, accurate, as well as being truthful. This stems from a person's morals and values, and how people define what is "good and bad". Throughout history, how journalists and the media have debated the terms of ethics on what can be shared out to the public.

Communication ethics concerns not only the individual, but is of great concern to businesses, corporations, and professional entities. A business with unethical communication practices is not as effective as one with ethical communication practices. For example, a business with unethical communication practices may withhold evidence that it is harming the environment or breaking a law through a lack of transparence; while a business with ethical communication practices will immediately press a release to the affected parties. In this example, transparency makes the business more effective because it notifies its clients, prospective or established, providers/suppliers, or other affiliates of the potential environmental hazard or law violation. In other words, in this example, transparency will encourage trust and good faith, that the effective business will not conceal what is in the interest of its audience. For the sake of counterexample, there may be a time when censorship is the more effective business practice: take the case of trade secrets, when a design method or management tactic is not openly revealed in the name of competitive advantage; or when terms of agreement/use that a business may have with a service provider forbids transparency. In the latter counterexample, a business may use social media to advertise, but the social media service provider may limit the conduct of its users. Here, if the business considers social media to be a valuable service to achieve its advertising, it may have to censor its product or service to preserve its agreement with the social media provider. Unethical Communication

Today, communication personnel continue to learn ethics as current media changes and new forms of media are developed.

Historically, communication ethics begun with the concerns correlated with print media and has advanced towards digital technologies. Critics began assessing the harms of unregulated press in North America and Europe during the 1890s, which forced the creation of principles in the United States during the 1920s. Four major books that emerged from this decade were: Who's Who of journalism luminaries: Nelson Crawford's Ethics of Journalism (1924), Leon Flint's The Conscience of the Newspaper (1925), William Gibbons's Newspaper Ethics (1926), and Albert Henning's Ethics and Practices in Journalism (1932). These authors left a legacy on the meaning behinds communication ethics and confronted in their books of issues with ethics. Perpetual issues have always been with the concerns of privacy and confidentiality, and have been progressively been debated with the freedom of speech.

Ethics can be traced back to the philosopher, Socrates (circa 470-399 B.C.E), who probed deep and broad concepts of goodness and justice. He believed that anyone, "given time to think and question, could gain insight into universally accepted rules of moral conduct".

His disciple, Plato (circa 428-348 B.C.E.), expanded on the concepts of goodness and justice, and argued that justice is achieved through wisdom. He also claimed that "good" was a value of what's moral to achieve a higher good.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E), who studied under Plato, developed the definition of virtue ethics, which is that a virtuous person will do the right thing primarily because he or she is of good character.

Hannah Karolak- "philosophy of communication ethics working from three assumptions: (1) through philosophy of communication one can discern, learn, and engage various communication ethics; (2) a multiplicity of communication ethics exist; and (3) in a postmodern moment characterized by multiple narratives, philosophy of communication ethics offers a space for the renewal of communication ethics scholarship." The first assumption explains that communication ethics can always be changing through time and evolution of society. The second assumption describes that there are multiple different views on communication ethics. The third assumption is a result of a combination of the first two assumptions of communication ethics.

Communication ethics provides guidance as to what kind of communication is "right or wrong".

These philosophers defined the meaning behind "good and justice" that is now integrated into the ethics of communication. In modern society, "good and justice" are discussed through media and news and what is considered right from wrong. Communication deals with these matters through everyday reports, interviews, and professional situations, as well as human morals in situations that deal with other people.