Table Of ContentTHE INVENTION OF JOURNALISM ETHICS
McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas
Series Editor: Philip J. Cercone
1 Problems of Cartesianism 9 The Jena System, 1804–5:
Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, Logic and Metaphysics
John M. Nicholas, and John W. G.W.F. Hegel
Davis Translation edited by
John W. Burbidge and
2 The Development of the Idea George di Giovanni
of History in Antiquity Introduction and notes by
Gerald A. Press H.S. Harris
3 Claude Buffier and
10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit:
Thomas Reid:
The Medieval Origins of
Two Common-Sense
Parliamentary Democracy
Philosophers
Arthur P. Monahan
Louise Marcil-Lacoste
11 Scottish Common Sense in
4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx:
Germany, 1768–1800:
State, Society, and the
A Contribution to the History
Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient
of Critical Philosophy
Greece
Manfred Kuehn
Philip J. Kain
12 Paine and Cobbett:
5 John Case and Aristotelianism
The Transatlantic Connection
in Renaissance England
David A. Wilson
Charles B. Schmitt
13 Descartes and the
6 Beyond Liberty and Property:
Enlightenment
The Process of Self-
Peter A. Schouls
Recognition in Eighteenth-
Century Political Thought
14 Greek Scepticism:
J.A.W. Gunn
Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient
7 John Toland: His Methods, Thought
Manners, and Mind Leo Groarke
Stephen H. Daniel
15 The Irony of Theology and
8 Coleridge and the Inspired the Nature of Religious
Word Thought
Anthony John Harding Donald Wiebe
16 Form and Transformation: 24 Kierkegaard as Theologian:
A Study in the Philosophy of Recovering My Self
Plotinus Arnold B. Come
Frederic M. Schroeder
25 An Enlightenment Tory in
Victorian Scotland:
17 From Personal Duties
The Career of Sir Archibald
towards Personal Rights:
Alison
Late Medieval and Early
Michael Michie
Modern Political Thought,
c. 1300–c. 1650 26 The Road to Egdon Heath:
Arthur P. Monahan The Aesthetics of the Great in
Nature
18 The Main Philosophical Richard Bevis
Writings and the Novel Allwill
27 Jena Romanticism and Its
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Appropriation of Jakob
Translated and edited by
Böhme:
George di Giovanni
Theosophy – Hagiography –
Literature
19 Kierkegaard as Humanist:
Paolo Mayer
Discovering My Self
Arnold B. Come
28 Enlightenment and
Community:
20 Durkheim, Morals, and
Lessing, Abbt, Herder, and the
Modernity
Quest for a German Public
W. Watts Miller
Benjamin W. Redekop
21 The Career of Toleration: 29 Jacob Burckhardt and
John Locke, Jonas Proast, and the Crisis of Modernity
After John R. Hinde
Richard Vernon
30 The Distant Relation:
Time and Identity in Spanish-
22 Dialectic of Love:
American Fiction
Platonism in Schiller’s
Eoin S. Thomson
Aesthetics
David Pugh 31 Mr Simson’s Knotty Case:
Divinity, Politics, and Due
23 History and Memory in Process in Early Eighteenth-
Ancient Greece Century Scotland
Gordon Shrimpton Anne Skoczylas
32 Orthodoxy and 36 Labeling People:
Enlightenment: French Scholars on Society,
George Campbell in the Race, and Empire, 1815-1849
Eighteenth Century Martin S. Staum
Jeffrey M. Suderman
37 The Subaltern Appeal to
33 Contemplation and Experience: Self-Identity,
Incarnation: Late Modernity, and the
The Theology of Marie- Politics of Immediacy
Dominique Chenu Craig Ireland
Christophe F. Potworowski
38 The Invention of Journalism
34 Democratic Legitimacy: Ethics: The Path to Objectivity
Plural Values and Political and Beyond
Power Stephen J.A. Ward
Frederick M. Barnard
35 Herder on Nationality,
Humanity, and History
Frederick M. Barnard
THE INVENTION OF
JOURNALISM ETHICS
The Path to Objectivity
and Beyond
Stephen J.A. Ward
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca
• •
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004
isbn 0-7735–2810-5
Legal deposit fourth quarter 2004
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social
Scienc,es and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada
Council for the Arts for its publishing program. It also acknowledges the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publish-
ing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for its publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ward, Stephen John Anthony, 1951–
The invention of journalism ethics: the path to objectivity
and beyond/Stephen J.A. Ward.
(McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of ideas; 38)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-7735-2810-5
1. Journalistic ethics. 2. Objectivity. I. Title. II. Series.
pn4756.w37 2004 174′.90704 c2004-903241-0
This book was typeset by Dynagram Inc. in 10/12 Baskerville.
To Glenda
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Reinventing Journalism Ethics 3
part one: the roots of objectivity
1 Objectivity: Senses and Origins 9
2 Objectivity: Ancient, Early Modern, Positivist 37
part two: the evolution of journalism ethics
3 The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Seventeenth Century 89
4 The Invention of a Public Ethic: The Eighteenth Century 128
5 Anticipating Objectivity: The Nineteenth Century 174
6 Objectivity and After: The Twentieth Century 214
part three: pragmatic objectivity
7 Pragmatic Objectivity 261
Epilogue: The Future of Objectivity 317
References 333
Index 353
