• What Is It Good For? Towards A Millian Utility Model for Ethical Terrorism Coverage

    Editor(s):
    Jyotirmaya Patnaik (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Humanities, Information Ecosystems
    Subject(s):
    Journalism, Terrorism, Literature, Terrorism--Social aspects, Communication
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, war, terrorism, Art journaling, Literature of terrorism, Sociology of terrorism
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/s50y-s949
    Abstract:
    Journalism, the “first draft of history” (i.e. Barth, 1943, p. 667), often drafts a history of tragedy and violence – “the oldest kinds of stories” (Coté & Simpson, 2000, p. 3). Throughout history, war and storytelling are intractably linked: “Because of the far-reaching effects of war, we want to know as much about it as possible. For that … we turn to media” (Copeland, 2005, p. xvii). However, because war “has no equivalent in a settled, civil society ” (Walzer, 1977, p. 127), historians and journalists alike perennially struggle to find a framework suitable for investigating and reporting it. In much of the ongoing public discourse surrounding war – as well as its coverage –arguments on both issues often resonate with the philosophy of utilitarianism. More than 150 years after its publication, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism continues to exert a perennial influence in philosophical musings on both war and journalism. Utilitarian arguments appear especially in discussions of just war theory (JWT), a consequentialist tradition that demands that wars must be justifiable in why they start, how they are fought, and how they end. Most recently, William H. Shaw (2011) synthesized disparate elements of debate into what he called a new utilitarian war principle (U WP) for considering recourse to war. Increasingly, war coverage focuses more on the experience of those fighting and less on why and how they fight. In 2004, The New York Times published an unprecedented apology for failing to do enough of the latter in its coverage leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq the previous year. Reviewing Mill’s Utilitarianism, and building on recent Millian scholarship, this paper reacts to this confessed failure by proposing a more utilitarian model for how journalists might more comprehensively cover the wars we wage – especially when terror is a tactic, and the media itself risks complicity in amplifying the effect of the action.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.15655/mw/2020/v11i1/49766
    Publisher:
    Media Watch
    Pub. Date:
    2020-1-7
    Journal:
    Media Watch
    Volume:
    11
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    50 - 66
    ISSN:
    2249-8818,0976-0911
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    2 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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