Description:
Media Ethics serves as an authoritative resource for understanding the theoretical frameworks underlying media practices and the ethical dilemmas media professionals face in a digital environment.
Brief description: Patrick Lee Plaisance is the Don W. Davis Professor in Ethics at the Bellisario College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University. He was the editor of the Journal of Media Ethics from 2014 to 2024 and is an affiliate faculty member of the Rock Ethics Institute. He is the author of Virtue in the Media: The Moral Psychology of Excellence in News & Public Relations and editor of the Handbook of Communication & Media Ethics.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Previous Editions:
"[Plaisance] is able and willing to bring theory and practice to bear upon each other. He has fresh approaches to old issues - like privacy. His text makes me think about issues in new ways....[The book] lets students know from the outset that understanding of practice can be enhanced by the application of theory....This discussion of privacy [Chapter 12] as a protection for the public sector is one of the best and most thoughtful I have seen in the field of media ethics."
Maggie Jones Patterson, Duquesne University McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
"I love that the author has gone beyond the ancient philosophers and included contemporary - and more diverse - philosophers."
Dom Caristi, Ball State University Department of Media
"Many ethical books focus just on the production side and not enough on the audience side of the media. Addressing media literacy and the role of the consumer is an important part of approaching ethical concerns."
Jared Bahir Browsh, University of Colorado Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies
"Plaisance's textbook is a well-written and accessible approach to media ethics that eschews the traditional organization of a textbook into different professions in order to deal more fully with key values in contemporary media practice like transparency, autonomy, privacy, and community."
Andrew Ventimiglia, Illinois State University School of Communication
"Plaisance provides a strong mixture of classical philosophers with contemporary philosophers, breaking down the concepts in easily digestible sections."
Michael T. Martínez, University of Tennessee School of Journalism and Media
"This book succeeds in introducing students of media ethics to both practical dilemmas and to philosophical approaches that are inclusive of differing worldviews and epistemologies. I appreciate the book's accessible writing style and its attention to both individual and societal ethics.."
Lynn Schofield Clark, Ph.D., Professor, Chair, and Director, Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media, University of Denver; President, International Association of Internet Researchers
"This is a good book, well written, highly literate but also highly accessible, explaining ideas very clearly. The authors claims to distinguish his text by centering it on the philosophy of ethics and the philosophical justification for asserting principles, which I find to be exactly what he does, and he does it very well."
Lawrence L. Garber, Jr., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Marketing, Elon University
"Media ethics may sound like an oxymoron - like government intelligence - but in his book, Plaisance makes it crystal clear that if society is to be virtuous, and indeed more civil, practitioners across all media disciplines, whether journalists, public relations-advertising-marketing professionals, or social media technologists, must seek authenticity, transparency, accountability, and, most of all, the common good, in all that they do. The future of what we consider 'civil'ization hangs in the balance."
Dr. Donn J. Tilson, APR, Fellow PSRA, Associate Professor Emeritus of Public Relations, School of Communication, University of Miami