Media Ethics: Issues and Cases

The eleventh edition of this authoritative book focuses on the most pressing media ethics issues, including coverage of the 2024 elections and the emergence of AI. Enabling students to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment, the book focuses on practical ethical theory for use across the media curriculum.

Twenty-three new cases address events from the Israel-Hamas war, AI-generated authors, privacy for underage influencers, Fox News election fraud claims, social media whistleblowers, threats to student-run media outlets, police posing as journalists, the Bud Light transgender ad uproar, the use of generative AI in advertising, the publication of graphic war images (focusing on the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars), deep fakes in sexually explicit media, the impact of Taylor Swift on the NFL, video games requiring in-game purchases to win, and more.

Additional Features:
- Each case has pedagogical questions that expand outward from the specifics of the case itself to ever-larger issues suggested by the case.
- Chapters in such areas as social justice, media and democracy, and loyalty, discuss all types of media rather than segmenting the text by medium.
- An introductory chapter in moral philosophy begins the text and a final chapter in moral development concludes it.
- Text addresses the implications of digital content throughout multiple media industries and platforms.
Online material for students and instructors includes all cases from previous editions, lecture slides, essay questions, and suggested classroom activities.

Chad Painter is associate professor and department chair of communication at the University of Dayton.

Erin E. Schauster is associate professor of advertising, public relations, and media design at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Lee Wilkins is Distinguished Curator’s Teaching Professor and professor emerita in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

Philip Patterson is Distinguished Professor of Mass Communication at Oklahoma Christian University.