My Garden: An Ethical Quandary

This week we embarked upon the issue of ethics within the media with a particular emphasis on advertising

After showing us a few slides featuring controversial billboard advertisements Bruce asked us to plot our opinion on an ethical plane, indicating how ethical we thought each image was and if it was in good or bad taste. Looking at my subjective interpretation if each image compared to my peers made me realize how variant an individuals reaction to an image can be and how fine the line is between what is and isn’t ethical in the media.

To determine the difference between what is essentially ethical and what is just crude we explore three ethical theories – deontology, consequentialism (teleology) and virtue.

The ideology of deontology is structured by rules, principles and duties and postulates that the right thing will eventuate if the rules are followed, predominantly all ethics codes are deontological.

Consequentialism is a utilitarian approach that suggests that getting a “good” or “right” outcome is all that matters, it disregards how the outcome was reached, it states that the end may justify the means. Our Guest Speaker gave an example of a consequentialist approach in the statement – “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.”

The theory of Virtue ethics posits that ‘goodness’ and happiness are derived from good habits and disposition of character. The virtues include courage, justice, temperance and prudence which formulate the ‘golden mean’ of behaviour. The golden mean establishes a balance between the virtues, for example courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice.

We then revisited the early school of thought – deontology to discuss ethics codes in Australia. Various codes of ethics in journalism practice and professional communication include the MEAA, PRIA, AFA and AANA which regulate assorted aspects of the Australian media.

This lecture got me thinking about the distinction between what is art and what is unethical advertising. In our tutorial we discussed eminent South African photographer, Kevin Carter’s renowned image of a starving Sudanese child struggling to reach a food station as a vulture looks on. Personally, from an artistic background I couldn’t see anything wrong with the image, obviously I felt empathy for the child but I saw it in it’s entirety as an artistic expression rather than an unethical form of media. This made me even more aware of how grey the area of ethics is.

I remember a few months ago reading about one of Diesel’s notoriously banned advertising campaigns. Teenage photographer Nirrimi Hakanson was awarded the SOYA award for photography in Australia in 2010 and her success lead her to an opportunity to shoot a campaign for Diesel called ‘Be Stupid.’ The playfully sexual images were banned for their inappropriateness and sexual exploitation.