The Media and Its Responsibilities

The Media and Its Responsibilities

Introduction

Media is known to be a platform which provides the weak with strength and power, or it may be referred to as a loaded gun in the hands of humankind. Media is amongst the most powerful and influential entities that exist in this world. This is for the fact that media has the ability to control the mindsets of people. Media bares upon itself a number of responsibilities and those responsibilities require being upheld and clarified by the society. Today's media unfortunately does not follow the ethical standards that consequentially convey mixed messages to the society. These messages are often false, desensitizing, and demoralizing. Adults and even young individuals equally try to find their ways through the world and through life with a wrecked compass. The role served by media in matters like suicide, bullying, and self-worth require being addressed and reviewed. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive discussion on media and the responsibility and roles it has towards the society. The discussion would employ the standpoint of contemporary as well as a classical ethical theory. The classical theory which would be employed is “virtue of ethics” that encompasses the several characters of an individual. The contemporary theory to be used in the paper is “emotivism” that entails the ethical decisions of a person to be based on their emotions and feelings. The concluding part of the paper would analyze the theory that is closer to my own personal standpoint and the reason for which I decided to use that specific theory.

Discussion

Virtue ethics, in accordance with the theory, attempts to discover “not what makes an act good but what makes a person virtuous”. A virtuous individual certainly shows and acquires high moral standards. If media, in various areas, serves the role of a super peer, should it be that media must also demonstrate the same high ethical standards? Strong poise with appropriate constraints require being implemented with the society and mass media. This may be done by structuring virtues in maturity scales or age categories for the order of focusing high virtues and moral standards to old from young. Today's people and tomorrow's generations would all take advantage of this variation and would be able to lead their lives by high standards and morals. Being social with the content provides a better chance of being viewed; however a rather collective stance towards comprehending individuals and realizing the true virtues, together with re-establishing the core of ethical virtues prior to making the dangerous content go public, significantly increases the probability for the society to really care (Zyglidopoulos, et.al, 2012). The individuals that are actually virtuous have well established aims and objectives. Individuals, keeping this into consideration, are justly driven by their inner virtues, which encompass; their dream, vision, decision, determination, belief, desire, and heart. Media and statistics unfortunately don't consider these powerful, solid, and crucial inner virtues as significant. Media requires being more focused on the inner feelings instead ...