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Virtue Ethics: The War Against Fake News

1454 Words6 Pages

What determines whether something is ethical and how do I personally decide what is ethical, or in other words, right and wrong? Looking at different ethical principles, I am able to understand what others have used to judge different ethical situations. Kantian ethics deals with deontological ethics, which is the nature of duties as well as a person’s intentions and actions. While, virtue ethics emphasizes an individual’s character and utilitarianism pertains to what provides the greatest amount of happiness to the most people. Each of these ethical principles can be used to analyze life’s events. For example, the media, providing false news reports to the general public can definitely be analyzed by either Kantian, virtue, or utilitarian …show more content…

So, obviously, the question is whether or not these reporters’ actions, like that of Craig Timberg who published incomplete and unreliable information regarding Donald Trump’s potential involvement with Russia, is ethical …show more content…

By using virtue ethics, it is necessary to look at the characteristics of an ethical and good reporter and use these characteristics as a way to judge the reporters in “The War Against Fake News”. The three virtues that a good reporter has, that I want to focus on, are honesty, the ability to be empathetic, and motivation. Since the reporters in this case were publishing falsified information, the reporters were definitely not being honest. The reporters’ have too much empathy, or feelings towards a particular subject preventing them from reporting unbiased information. As for motivation, if a reporter publishes false information, without making an effort to see if there is a better source of information, the reporter has the vice of too little motivation. Since the reporters in the article have a vice in all of the qualities that I defined as important virtues for a good reporter, I think virtue ethics would consider the reporters in the media to be

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