By Kodi Barth

Next week, I begin four months of media ethics lectures to an expectant group of 29 student journalists at the University of Connecticut in America’s East Coast.

So enthusiastic does this group appear to be that some of them have engaged me with long-distance questions whose answers would stretch the entire duration they are paying for class.

These young people appear determined that by the end of the course, they must know how to operate ethically in the media. But I am planning to spring a surprise on them. For a whole week, they won’t hear me talk about media or journalism.

Instead, I plan to rattle their heads with a discourse in philosophy.

If an angry viewer called your station to ask why you broadcasted the name of a rape victim, it would be embarrassing to simply answer, "Why not; it seemed like the right thing to do at the time." Such a question is an attack on ethics. And people should explain their ethical decisions. That ability to explain ethical choices is an important one for journalists, who deal every day with sources, colleagues and ultimately, the public.

Is television harmful for children? Does media coverage of court cases undermine the legal process? Do paparazzi threaten the right to privacy? Should children be protected from Internet pornography? Does concentration of ownership jeopardise media content?

Each of these questions presents an ethical problem with no single correct answer.

But the final decision in each case is full of ethical ramifications. Resolving dilemmas is the business of ethics. So how should the journalist walk the ethical decision-making process?

It would be nice to begin from ancient Greece, the birthplace of philosophy.

The Greeks loosely defined philosophy as "love of wisdom". Philosophers spend their lives asking more questions than they offer answers for. But in their endless questioning even of "the obvious", they seek to distinguish the fundamental from the trivial; reality from illusion; truth from fallacy.

And this is what the media in general and journalism in particular purports to achieve: provide society with the information it needs to know, so that citizens may be free and empowered to determine the course of their lives. To do this right, journalists must cross ethical minefields.

My lectures, therefore, will begin with philosophy because since the days of ancient Greece, philosophers have tried to draft a series of guidelines governing how to make ethical choices. I will talk to these future journalists about names like Aristotle, Emmanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. Aristotle taught that virtue lies at the mean between two extremes. Journalists facing tough choices might do well to pick the middle ground.

Kant coined a theory that smells of the Bible’s golden rule: Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you. He called it the Categorical Imperative. He insisted that everyone should act with the belief that the choice they make is the best for all of humanity.The upshot is that the moral force lies not in the person who acts, but in the action itself. Journalists have few privileges under Kant’s Categorical Imperative. They can’t claim the right to lie or the right to invade privacy to get a story.

And Mill perfected Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy; that the consequences of actions are important in deciding whether they are ethical. That is why investigative reporters might find it necessary to publicise stories that harm individuals, in the hope that a greater good can be achieved. The name of Goldenberg scandal’s alleged chief suspect, Kamlesh Pattni, may be dragged in the mud in the hope that the country might never again face financial fleece of Goldenberg’s magnitude.

* The writer is a journalism lecturer bkodi@usiu.ac.ke