Clifford G. Christians's media ethics theory of global justice

Abstract

Any serious conversation on the necessity of universal norms in media ethics necessarily includes the name of Clifford Christians. 'Necessarily' because Christians was at the inception of this conversation. Indeed, he is considered one of its 'precursors' (Couldry et al. 2013, 3), since he began to make an appeal for 'normative approaches to media ethics' as early as 1979 (Craig and Ferr e 2006, 123). The book Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age (henceforth 'Media Ethics') puts between two covers all the ideas on media ethics, communication theory and the philosophy of technology that Christians has matured throughout a long career 'championing the plausibility of norms within a common ethics of communication acceptable across cultures' (Cortes 2019, 32).It is not insignificant that despite Christians's prominent position in his field, and despite having written a boatload of material on media ethics in his forty years of scholarship, 'Media Ethics' is his first and (so far) only solo-authored book. Since 1977 he has been hinting at working on a media ethics theory from the ground up. Finally, in this book he confidently presents 'a new theory of communication ethics that is international, multicultural, and gender inclusive' (Christians 2019, 22). But 'in (his) characteristic humility' (Babbili 2008) Christians did not explicitly state the fact of his authorship. Instead, he claimed it by publishing this book with him as its sole author, thereby fulfilling the requirement of what I likewise affirm as Christians's characteristic intellectual honesty.Christians's newest book has six chapters that reflect the two main proposals of his 'Media Ethics Theory of Global Justice.' The first of these is the view that 'technologies are not neutral but value laden' (Christians 2019, 21). For this reason, Christians affirms, technology must be included within the ethical calculus, lest in not doing so 'one unwittingly lays down the conditions for (oneself to consider) technology as an idol, and/or vice-versa' (Cortes 2019, 270). This is the 'philosophy of technology' component of the theory. The second proposal offers 'sacredness of life' and its corollary principles of truth, human dignity, non-violence and cosmopolitan justice as globally acceptable standards for media ethics. These principles, which Christians calls 'proto-norms,' were derived from an original research he did with Fr. Michael Traber, SMB and his reflections on the philosophy of language (Cortes 2019(Cortes , 2016. This is the 'ethics of being' component of the theory.As all good theories go, these two proposals feed into each other and find their way into each other's discussions. For example, Christians discusses in Chapter 1 the 'instrumentalist view' that treats technology as a 'mere instrument,' the blame for which he lays squarelyand perhaps in a rather exaggerated wayon Aristotle's shoulders. Christians considers this view as 'naïve' and the main contributor to a 'technicistic society' (Christians 1986, 200), as well as a key pillar...