Desperately Seeking Democracy: Unreflexive Liberalism and the ‘Privacy Bias’ in Journalism Ethics

Abstract

Because journalism ethics draw deeply, and perhaps unreflexively, on liberal political traditions, there is a lot of confusion about what public accountability entails. When interpreted from the standpoint of liberal theory, the perception of the need for public accountability is generally framed by a simplistic opposition between the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy. Central to the liberal framing of the accountability is a weak notion of ‘publicity’ anchored in notions of representation and revelation. Furthermore, there is also a strong tradition within liberal theory to treat ethics as a matter of private concern, rather than something that can be publicly resolved. For these reasons, the balance of democratic consideration always seems to sit more comfortably with privacy rights than it does with considerations of accountability to the public. This paper explores some of these dilemmas surrounding journalism ethics and public accountability by examining their theoretical underpinnings in liberal political theory and comparing them with a model of public accountability grounded in publicity construed as public participation.