Broadcast Law - Week 13

1. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics

2. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Making ethical decisions within the fast-paced telecommunications industry is not easy. • It involves heavy thinking regarding such subjects as fairness, taste, conflict of interest, trust, and accuracy. • It is very difficult to define good and bad behavior b/c “good” and “bad” are arbitrary and vary from one person to another.

3. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Individuals within all facts of life have a responsibility to act in an ethical manner. • But the burden is often greater within the media industry because of its visibility. • Most ethical decisions those in telecommunications must make involve their responsibilities to their audience.

4. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • E.g., a Chicago TV station accepted $300K to show an ad on its website promoting a live webcast of laser eye surgery. The same day it aired, a news story was broadcast in which the doctor who performed the operation was interviewed and there was mention of webcast. • Was this legitimate news or payback to an advertiser?

5. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • In addition to ethical actions toward the audience, media practitioners must also consider ethical practices toward each other. • Many deals are made in the entertainment biz, and if the agreements arrived at are not honored, individual and corporate credibility suffers.

6. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • People want to do biz with other people who keep their word, but sometimes in the rush to make the deal, ethics becomes a low priority. • WARNING: the temptation for unethical practices is great within the industry.

7. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • The entertainment biz is one where a few people can get rich very fast, legitimately. • Many other people who want to get rich fast are walking the thin line between right and wrong. • This does not justify unethical behavior, but it does make it seem more acceptable because “everyone is doing it.”

8. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Ethical decisions are not always clear-cut. • Deciding to do something may harm one segment of society, while deciding not to do it may harm another. • E.g., condom ads are opposed by people who say such ads promote promiscuity and favored by people who wish to control teenage pregnancies and the spread of AIDS.

9. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Technological advances make for ever-changing ethical dilemmas b/c the make possible things no one had thought of previously. • E.g., technology now allows for parts of a picture to be removed and something else inserted. When CBS was covering the millennum celebrations, it placed a CBS “virtual” billboard into Times Square replacing a real NBC sign.

10. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Ethical decisions are rarely easy. Sometimes hindsight makes them look easy. • But b/c of lack of facts, peer pressure, the desire to succeed, and genuine differences of opinion, deciding what is right for the particular circumstance can be difficuilt.

11. Broadcast Law - Week 13 • Ethics • Ethical Considerations: • Everyone in the telecommunications biz should remember ethical considerations so as not to be tempted into unethical behavior. • Media personnel should make every effort to abide by the truth, to treat other people equitably, to keep promises, to cause as little overall harm as possible, and to do what they truly feel is right.