This book provides an applied model of corruption to identify, analyse, and assess the ethics of major types of corruption in the media involving practices such as cash-for-comment, media release journalism, including video news releases (VNRs), fake news, deep fakes, and staged news. The book starts with a conceptual philosophical analysis of corruption in general, followed by an in-depth analysis of media corruption, across its various transformations, from the legacy media of the 4th Estate (e.g. The UK Guardian) to the digital media of the 5th Estate (e.g. Social Media and Wikileaks) to the Network Media of the 6th Estate (e.g. Facebook and Google), and provides key case studies as practical illustrations and contextualisation of those major types of media corruption. It explains how the conversion of the two forms of media communication, corporate and social digital communication, as expressed in the symbiotic relationship between the 4th Estate and the 5th Estate exposes and enables the reporting of corruption, signalling a major shift in the way the media itself can provide an effective means for anti-corruption measures against major practices of corruption that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Author(s): Edward H. Spence
Series: Library of Public Policy and Public Administration, 15
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 239
City: Cham
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Why a Book on Media Corruption?
1.2 What Is Corruption?
1.2.1 The Characterising Features of Corruption
1.2.2 The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Corruption
1.3 Why Care About Media Corruption?
1.4 The Structure of the Book
1.5 Chapter Outline
References
Chapter 2: The Tree of Knowledge: The Normative Structure of Information
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The Normative Structure of Information
2.3 The Attitudinal Modes of Information
2.4 Information as Communication
2.5 Global Information Ethics: Cultural Relativism Without Moral Relativism
2.6 Media Convergence of the Fourth Estate and Fifth Estate
2.7 The Normative Impact of Media Convergence: Four Illustrative Cases
2.8 The New Journalists of the Fifth Estate?
2.9 Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: The Serpent’s Lair – Characteristics, Causes and Contexts of Corruption
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Ring of Gyges
3.3 The Characterizing Features of Corruption
3.4 An Objection Against the Argument That Invisibility Is a Regular and Characterizing Feature of Corruption
3.4.1 The Corrupt Agent Does Not Meet the Presupposed Condition of Minimal Instrumental Rationality
3.4.2 The Corrupt Agent Operates in a Hobbesian State of Nature
3.4.3 Institutionalized and Systemic Corruption
3.5 A Further Essential Characterizing Feature of Corruption
3.6 The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Corruption
3.7 Taxonomy of Corruption
3.7.1 Systematic and Gratuitous Corruption
3.7.2 Actions and Actors
3.7.3 Constitutive and Regulative Corruption
3.7.4 Individual and Group Corruption
3.8 The Corrosion of Character
3.9 The Instrumental Rationality of Corruption
3.10 Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Media Corruption – Types, Causes and Contexts
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Characterizing Features of Corruption
4.3 The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Corruption
4.4 Types of Media Corruption
4.4.1 The Inside Job: Fictional News, Biased News, and News for Sale
4.4.2 Deception by Collusion: Fake News, Staged News, and Cash-for-Comment
4.4.3 Seeing Is Not Believing – How Pictures Lie
4.4.4 Media Corruption in the New Digital Media
4.5 The Faustus Pact: Media Corruption by Collusion
4.6 The Primary Professional Roles of Journalism, Advertising and Public Relations
4.6.1 Journalism
4.6.2 Advertising
4.6.3 Public Relations (PR)
4.7 What Are the Minimal Primary Professional and Instrumental Requirements for Achieving Those Roles?
4.7.1 Journalism
4.7.2 Advertising
4.7.3 Public Relations
4.8 Are Those Roles and Their Realization Compatible with Each Other?
4.8.1 Journalism and Advertising
4.8.2 Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising
4.9 The Systemic Problem of Advertorials
4.9.1 Advertising Laws: Cash-for-Comment
4.10 Citizens and Consumers
4.11 Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Tech Media Corruption in the Age of Information
5.1 Introduction
5.2 What Is Facebooks Professional and Institutional Role?
5.2.1 Role Morality
5.2.2 Facebook’s Primary Role
5.3 Facebook’s Normative Commitments as a Media Company
5.4 The Cambridge Analytica Case
5.5 The Normative Violations by Facebook in the Cambridge Analytical Case
5.6 Did Facebook’s Part in the Cambridge Analytica Case Constitute Media Corruption?
5.7 The Corrupting Effects of Facebook’s Violation of Its Normative Media Responsibilities
5.7.1 Information and Communication Corruption
5.7.2 Democratic Political Corruption
5.7.3 The Collective Moral Responsibility of Citizens
5.8 The Conflict of Interest at the Heart of Facebook’s Business Model Conducive to Media Corruption
5.8.1 What Is a Conflict of Interest?
5.9 The Systemic Problem of Harvesting and Marketing Information
5.10 Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Investigative Journalism – The Serum Against the Snake’s Bite
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Key Cases of Corruption Exposed and Reported by Investigative Journalists
6.3 2016–2020
6.3.1 Panama Papers
6.3.1.1 Summary
6.3.2 Cambridge Analytica
6.3.2.1 Summary
6.3.2.2 Analysis
6.3.3 Timeline of Other Notable Cases of Corruption Exposed by Investigative Journalists (1950s–2020s)
6.3.4 Edward R. Murrow (1950s)
6.3.4.1 Summary
6.3.4.2 Analysis
6.3.5 Frank Serpico (1970s)
6.3.5.1 Summary
6.3.5.2 Analysis
6.3.6 Pentagon Papers (1970s)
6.3.6.1 Summary
6.3.6.2 Analysis
6.3.7 Watergate (1970s)
6.3.7.1 Summary
6.3.7.2 Analysis
6.3.8 The Moonlight State and Police Corruption (1980s)
6.3.8.1 Summary
6.3.8.2 Analysis
6.3.9 The Boston Globe’s Exposure of Church Abuse (2002)
6.3.9.1 Summary
6.3.9.2 Analysis
6.3.10 Katharine Gun v. UK Government (2003)
6.3.10.1 Summary
6.3.10.2 Analysis
6.3.11 News of the World Scandal (2006–2011)
6.3.11.1 Summary
6.3.11.2 Analysis
6.3.12 Banking Bad: Banking Misconduct Investigation (2014–2019)
6.3.12.1 Summary
6.3.12.2 Analysis
6.4 Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Public Policy and Regulative Change to Combat Media Corruption
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Regulation of Media Corruption and Other Normative Misdemeanors
7.3 The Articulation and Rationale of Public Ethical Principles and Values
7.4 The Necessary Alignment of Public Ethical Principles and Values with Regulation
7.5 Oversight and Accountability by Proactive Regulation
7.6 The Market Good vs The Public Good
7.7 Conclusion
References
Epilogue – Knowledge to Wisdom in the Age of Information
References
Appendices
Appendix 1: The Myth of Gyges
Book II
Appendix 2: The Allegory of the Cave
Book VII
Bibliography
Index
