Lecture #5- The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Today's lecture, delivered by Dr John Harrison opened the arena of ethical or unethical practice and good taste and bad taste in the field of journalism.

With the scaling activity we participated in, I thought it was somewhat difficult to determine the boundaries of what is deemed unethical.

This is a moral dilemma which I believe light will be shed on once I have read the journalistic codes of practice which were mentioned in the latter half of the lecture.

An important point addressed in today's lecture was the 3 ethical theories of journalism:

• deontology
• consequentialism
• virtue

Deontological theory states that you will do the right thing by following the rules. Consequentialism, as the term suggests that achieving a good outcome is what matters regardless of the means used to obtain the ends. Virtue ethics refers to who you are as a person and that happiness comes from a good disposition of character.


In the first half of the lecture, the following video was shown:

Personally, and forgive me if this seems like I am taking it too seriously; I find this advertisement incredibly offensive, ignorant and generally ridiculous. Ads like this in my opinion, hinder the progress of the obtainment of equality in society and further cement ridiculous prejudices that are outdated and make no sense in contemporary Australia.