2 - Reconstructing Media Ethics

Summary

Western news journalism is more than 600 years old, first appearing as newsbooks and one-page broadsides in late sixteenth-century Europe, several decades after Gutenberg’s printing press. The ethics of journalism – debate about journalism’s purpose and practice – began almost immediately. What was this brash new intruder into the highly censored public spheres of England, France, Germany, the lowlands, and beyond? The focus on journalism in the centuries ahead would only intensify, as the press became “the media,” and the media became a global and digital behemoth.