Something's Missing Here....Ethics?

Well, back to something more mainstream than Pie. I just reviewed a news post from the Christian Science Monitor about why support for the war has fallen so fast when compared with Korea and Vietnam. Weakening resolve related to mounting casualties was the predominant source of this shift.

However, I would argue that media presence and availability of rapid-fire outlets (Internet especially) contributes more to this overall shift. We now have ways to move stories faster than ever, and we also have the ability to broadcast our views to the world via the Internet, or by starting our own TV or radio station. The fact that speed of available information alone was not accounted for causes me further concern about what else may have impacted the responses for the survey used. It also highlights the need for something everyone needs to be reminded of: the need for ethics among all of us.

Why ethics? Ethics courses are generally given to folks in school that are being trained in areas of life, where the public will have to place more than an average amount of trust in them for making key decisions. I am familiar with it in the area of mental health, but medicine and business are also high on the list. Heck, there are courses for ethics in just about every area of professional life. I include on this list Communication Ethics. Where TV and newspaper personnel would be prime candidates, I believe this should be something pushed in high schools.

Some of you are saying, you've lost it Professor. But have I? If you take into account how many computers exist for posting material, it is much more than your average class of media hounds (According to the Blog Herald, the number as of July 2005 is over 70 million!) The number of folks in the U.S. is estimated to be as much as thirty million! And how many of those blog sites have multiple authors, like this one. We only have a few, but there are those with significantly more (IMAO has seven, Common Sense and Wonder has five, at least for the ones I like to read). And again, this is only for blogs. This doesn't include underground radio and TV stations.

The ability to disseminate information that can be reviewed by a significant percentage of people should require ethical considerations because of the amount of power it allows one to wield. Bloggers, in general, are good about policing the ranks and holding each other accountable. But the ability to make a key impact about a hot topic is fraught with responsibility and pitfalls. Look at the initial stories we get about the possible geeking of al-Zarqawi in Iraq. I am becoming more jaded, but I have to admit some small semblance of hope when I see the headline.

That little tweak can be larger, and can cause ripple effects. I really think this ability should be put on an ethics course for all. More arguments can be made about further boring people and trying to fit these things in to an already crowded curriculum in our schools. But my experience suggests that most would be willing and eager to debate an discuss the issues at hand. In part, that is what ethics should cause us to do. But we have to open up the dialogue soon, before we get something causing a major panic amongst our populace.