Lecture 5- Ethics with Dr. John Harrison

Just because something is tacky, doesn't mean it's unethical. 

Tacky- showing poor taste or quality

Unethical- not conforming to approved standards of social or professional behavior

The main focus of today's lecture was how to define an advertisement as either good taste, bad taste, ethical or unethical. It required us to delve into our own morals and come up with what we thought crossed the line in terms of public advertising. I was a little unsure at first about how far is too far when it comes to ads- we all know good advertising is about pushing the boundaries- but when I saw the Windsor Smith ad with the woman crouched suggestively in front of a mans legs, I knew a line had been crossed.

There's subverting feminism in an ironic way for effect and then there's plain old fashion objectification, and that's what this ad was doing. The sad thing is, although the ad breached all sorts of regulations, there was no requirement to take it down and as a result, the shoe company ended up getting millions of dollars worth of free publicity, all for something so vulgar.    

I actually found an interview with the creator of the ad here which says that she thinks it's a 'beautiful shot' and that only 'some people' see the suggestive aspect of the image. Well, my question to you, miss Trendell, is 'What were you getting at if not a sexual innuendo?'

We were also introduced today to the three types of ethics; Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue and given a brief introduction to MEEA Principles that journalists must abide by which include; Honesty, Fairness, Independence and Respect for the Rights of Others. It saddens me that there is no legal incentive for journo's to abide by this code apart from the threat of defamation. Instead it's left up to individual morals and we all know where that gets us. Phone hacking anyone? 

What we need to achieve here is a balance of political correctness and general fairness that leaves journalists open to delve into the guts of a story but cautious enough not to go too far and infringe on the rights of others. We all just need to employ a little bit of common sense, and the same goes for deciding what is unethical and what's simply bad taste. We all have our personal opinions but there comes a point where even the most left-wing among us will say, 'hold on, that's not right.' And that's our common ground.