MEDIA, ETHICAL NORMS AND MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION

Abstract

Media reporting requires ethical prudence. Journalistic ethics must set norms, guidelines, rules, and codes that will provide for truthfulness and accuracy; impartiality and honesty; respect for personality and privacy; independence from individual interests; accountability to society and social goods; respect for the law; moral, competence and good taste.. New media offer quick contact, promotion, exchange of thought, and freedom of expression. New technologies, such as the Internet, do not change the necessity of posing basic ethical issues of privacy violations, intellectual property or identity theft, dissemination of fake information, but only give them a greater dimension. The current body of research provides ample evidence of the growing need for media literacy instruction in all schooling levels in order to educate and protect the young from unethical social media contents. Therefore, this paper will deal with the problem of media, ethical norms and media literacy education comprising teaching moral reasoning and critical thinking skills. Media literacy must be incorporated in all schooling levels, from the lowest and progressing towards the highest. Even the youngest ones nowadays know how to stream, how to twitch and use social media but they are not fully aware of possible negative effects. Media and the Internet especially should be seen as an instrument of change and progress but they can be manipulative as well. However, the role of the responsible society is to educate the young how to use media to their advantage and successfully differentiate ethical from the unethical in the media of the contemporary networking world.