Toward a philosophical approach to ethics for the moral journalist

In less than one hundred years, the prevailing conception of the right of free expression, typified by Mill's laissez-faire attitude toward intemperate speech, was largely replaced by notions such as Hocking's--that freedom of speech and of the press are moral rights laden with social obligations. The causes of this transformation are several--the invention of media with the power to reach millions instantly, the concentration of media ownership in fewer and more monopolized hands, the soaring price of establishing a new newspaper or other medium. This theoretical change has spurred the development of a new ethical discipline, journalistic ethics, to give content to this somewhat vague notion of duty, and to begin accomplishing the "impossible" task of "fixing bounds" beyond which journalistic expression ceases to be responsible and surrenders its moral, if not legal, right to freedom.