Media Ethics

WINNER 2026 McGuffey Longevity Award - Textbook & Academic Authors Association

Media Ethics, now in its eleventh edition, centres on the most pressing media ethics issues, including the coverage of the 2024 elections and the rise of AI. It empowers students to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment by providing practical ethical theory applicable across the media curriculum.

Featuring twenty-three new cases, Media Ethics delves into contemporary events such as the Israel-Hamas war, AI-generated authors, privacy issues for underage influencers, Fox News election fraud claims, social media whistleblowers, threats to student-run media outlets, instances of police posing as journalists, the Bud Light transgender ad uproar, the use of generative AI in advertising, the publication of graphic war images (with a special focus on the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars), deep fakes in sexually explicit media, the impact of Taylor Swift on the NFL, and video games that require in-game purchases to win, among others.

Additional Features:

• Each case includes pedagogical questions that expand beyond the specifics to address larger issues suggested by the case.
• Chapters cover areas such as social justice, media and democracy, and loyalty, discussing all types of media rather than segmenting by medium.
• An introductory chapter in moral philosophy begins the text, while a final chapter on moral development concludes it.
• The text addresses the implications of digital content across multiple media industries and platforms.

Online material for students and instructors includes all cases from previous editions, lecture slides, essay questions, and suggested classroom activities.