Running Head ETHICS AND CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY 1

Ethics and Corporate Responsibility

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ETHICS AND CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY 2

Ethics and Corporate Responsibility

Working in the media industry as an editor, I am likely to face several ethical issues.

One of the ethical issues I would face is balancing between social responsibility and

competitive advantage. Sometimes, I have come across exclusive stories and photos which if

published would give the newspaper a competitive advantage. For example, the death of

Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden was one of the most newsworthy events of the year 2011.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of a dangerous terrorist outfit known as al Qaeda was killed by

US forced in his compound in Pakistan in May 2011. His body was then disposed at sea.

Photographs of his corpse were taken before it was discarded at sea but President Obama,

after a day’s hesitation, decided against releasing those photos. However, a source leaks the

images exclusively to the media house I serve as an Editor in Chief. No other media house

has access to those photos. As an editor I was to make a decision whether to purchase the

photo’s and publish them to give my paper a competitive advantage, or weigh the impact of

publishing the photos on the society. Would publication of the photos cause divisions and

violence in the society? I encountered a critical incident and a moral dilemma.

The first question I need to ask myself as the person in charge of the decision making

process is whether the photos are relevant to the story. Would the photos add any value to the

story of the death of Osama bin Laden? Definitely, the photos would add a lot of value to the

story of Osama bin Laden’s death. As the adage goes, a photo carries more than a thousand

words. This means that the photographs would tell the story better than any amount of words

used in the narrative. They would make the story more credible and believable. Also, they

would raise the sales volumes of the newspapers from my media house because people would

go for the paper with the most believable story. This would also translate into future success

of my paper because people would like to associate with a media house that brought them

exclusive photos of a remarkable global newsworthy event first. To attain a competitive

advantage over the rivals in the market, and for business interest’s sake, publishing the
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photographs of Osama’s photos would be important. Secondly, I believe that the people have

the right to know what is happening to the world and the media should use every available

avenue to inform them fully about what is happening. As the person in charge of making

decisions on what my media should inform the people, I have a responsibility to ensure that

the people’s rights to information are respected. However, there are some ethical and moral

considerations I will have to make, because businesses interests and people’s right to

information cannot are not enough to inform decision making. One thing I will have to

consider is the state of our nation. How will the photos impact on the welfare and security of

the nation? Will the photos cause disunity and probably violence now, or in the future or in

the country, or will they unite people? America is a predominantly Christian country.

However, we have a sizeable percentage of Muslims living in this country. Osama bin Laden,

though a terrorist was a Muslim. The fact remains that a Muslim was murdered by the West.

For decades, there has been a tension between Islamic Fundamentalists and Western

hegemony (Parsons, 2008). Therefore, it is highly likely that the death of Osama bin Laden,

to Muslims means one more life lost in the hands of the west. Publication of the disfigured

corpse of Osama bin Laden in the media has a likelihood of annoying the Muslims. This can

incite passions that can lead to immediate or future reprisals.

One of the options I would consider is to buy and publish the photos since the photo’

will still be bought by a rival media house, which will get a competitive advantage if it

published the photos. The second option I would consider is publish the photos with a lot of

censorship. The third option would be not to publish the photo’s but acknowledge receipt of

the photo’s in a story that describes them so vividly that even if a rival media house published

them, the public would still know we had the photos first. The final option would be refusing

to buy the photos altogether. From a utilitarian ethical perspective, it would be unwise to

publish the photos. Utilitarianism is an ethical perspective that states that an action is ethical
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if it is creates the largest amount of benefit to the majority (Velasquez, 1996). On the other

hand, an action is also ethical if it causes the least harm to the people. In this case, publication

of the photos would benefit the people, but would end up causing a lot of harm in terms of

compromised security. However, non-publication of the photos would benefit the people

more because of would protect their lives from possible violence and retaliatory attacks that

would compromise the security situation in the country. From the utilitarian approach of least

harm caused to the people, I would think twice before publishing the photos. The security of

our nation and the lives of the people I serve are more important than the business interests of

my media house and the right of people to information. Therefore I would not sacrifice the

security of my nation and the lives of the people I am supposed to serve on the altar of

business interests. I would also make some cultural and social consideration before

publishing the photographs. According to American culture, death is a negative phenomenon

that invites grief and gloom. In America, death is not celebrated. In my view, publication of

gruesome photographs of a slain terrorist amounts to celebration of death, which is quite un-

American. A dead man is not a trophy to be displayed as a sign of victory, in American

culture. Furthermore, I would consider the history of photojournalism, focusing on similar

experiences elsewhere in the world. The history of photojournalism is full of numerous

perplexities. I draw from the experience of the editor of the Observer newspaper in London,

who published the charred remains of a soldier who had been incinerated in his vehicle

during the First Gulf War (Gower, 2008). The images shocked the whole nation. Even

journalistic professionals could not stand it. After the Observer published it and got negative

reactions from the public, not other publication in the UK, US and around the world dared to

publish that photo. The photo was beyond the limits of the guidelines of war photography. I

might be thinking that being the first media house to publish the photos would give my media

house a competitive advantage; however, they could be the source of the down fall of the
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media house. It is hard to predict the reaction of the public towards the photos. Instead of

getting the positive acclaim I expect, I might end up getting negative reactions that may put

the media house at war path with the audiences. This means that publication of those photos

would be a gamble which could pay off well, or backfire seriously. It is clear that reason

supporting withholding of the photos outnumber reasons supporting publication of the

photos. This means that my final decision would be non publication of the photos.

As an Editor in Chief, I would advise my media house to buy the photos but not

publish them. We would break the story that my media house has in possession photographs

of the corpse of the slain and describe the photos vividly to capture the imagination of the

audience such that even if the rival media houses got hold of the photos and published them,

the people would view them in reference to the descriptions that media house had given

earlier. That way, the audience would believe that we had the photographs first, and other

media houses got the photographs after reading our story. Therefore, we would have scored a

point more than our rivals without risking the ethical and moral issues that might accompany

publication of the photos. In the long run, we would have considered our business interests,

the right of people to information and ethical and moral issues regarding responsibility to the

society at a greater degree.

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References

Gower, K. K. (2008). Legal and Ethical Considerations for Public Relations. Chicago:

Waveland Press, Inc.

Parsons, P. J. (2008). Ethics in Journalism: A Guide to Best Practice. Philadelphia, PA:

Kogan Page Limited.

Velasquez, M. (1996). Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making. NY:

Pearson