Richard Aedy: Whether you're a working journalist or a news consumer, it's a fair bet you don't often think about the philosophical underpinnings of the Fourth Estate. Mark Pearson, though, does. The professor of journalism and social media at Griffith University has been researching alternative approaches to the one we've used in the Western World. Wait a minute, though! What's ours, exactly?

Mark Pearson: Well, ours is a bit of a hybrid but mainly it evolves from the British and US traditions which came from that Libertarian philosophy from Milton through to John Stuart Mill. Jefferson adopted that, which is basically "freedom of the press" and in some circumstances evolving into a "publish and be damned" kind of approach.


Richard Aedy: So the approach - our approach, the one we are all steeped in, is actually underpinned by a philosophy.

Mark Pearson: Well, any endeavour like that is steeped in cultural and sometimes religious traditions. There's a whole lot of Christianity in that Libertarian theory. Even when John Milton was writing Aeropagitica, his philosophical treaties about the freedom of the press which has been quoted in supreme court US cases and so on - even in that his preface was positioning man and god and basically saying that freedom of the press -- to deny that freedom is to deny one's spirit in the eyes of god.

Richard Aedy: Well I've always suspected, Mark, that I was doing god's work and you've confirmed it. [Laughter] So, that is our approach, and, perhaps in the same way that a fish doesn't notice water, it has never occurred to me that there were others. What are they?

Mark Pearson: There are many different cultural approaches to communication. It's hard to find a pure alternative, except in those countries that have had authoritarian traditions in recent decades. And there you have what the theorists, you know, called "The Communist Approach" and also there's the developmental model which is, basically, the kind of system that Singapore has adopted which says that one needs to have some limitations on the press for the good of the economy and the society, particularly while it's in a stage of economic development. Now, Western journalists have looked upon that quite skeptically, of course, simply because many have read it as just another way of a government excusing it's limitations on the Press.

Richard Aedy: Well, this is going to reflect my own perspective, Mark, obviously, but those other models don't sound to be a good as the one we're used to here. What is wrong with our model?

Mark Pearson: I don't see anything particularly wrong with the model itself, but what the model allows is a whole lot of human agency to navigate it. When you allow a certain level of freedom, unless you use that freedom responsibly you get all sorts of ethical tangles and you damage other people in all sorts of ways, as we saw through the whole News of the World saga. I'm certainly not proposing a different model, as such, but what I've queried in my more recent research has been; What is the actual moral compass that journalists are drawing upon as they navigate that model?

Richard Aedy: Alright, so you're exploring the idea of what we might call a Buddhist model, and I'll get you to unpack that in a minute. But, given the rise of China, I'm wondering about a Confucian model, which should put more emphasis on harmony with others.

Mark Pearson: I really don't care what tradition people draw upon. In fact, across Confucianism, Buddhism, the Judea-Christian approaches there are people who can follow those sorts of approaches and do their journalism in a very moral way. My concern is more that a lot of the young people coming into journalism today and many experienced practicing journalists haven't really thought about their moral framework that underpins their ethics. And without a moral framework to underpin your professional ethics, all you get with a professional ethical code is a simple list of rules, and, as we know, in our Western democratic libertarian approach to journalism, most of those ethical codes, including the Australian one, allow considerable wiggle room because there is always that overriding clause that the public's right to information, the "public interest" should take precedence or can take precedence over most of those rules in the right circumstances. So, how does a journalist navigate that wiggle room? What are the driving moral factors at play that help them decide whether to interview the grieving parents of the child who's died in tragic circumstances? Whether to do the promotional piece for someone who's really advertising in that media outlet and not tell the audience about that. These are basic ethical decisions but they stem back to a morality that tells that journalist whether something is fundamentally right or wrong in their behaviour.

Richard Aedy: I think you've got a point that if it's only about a list of rules, it's human nature to look for the loop-holes. So, lets go back to this idea of a morality, and you have written about, let's call it a Buddhist model, what are the elements of it?

Mark Pearson: Well, for a start, when we call it a Buddhist model, I don't actually call it a Buddhist model. I call it "mindful journalism" because it draws upon that tradition. Buddhism itself doesn't have to be a theistic religion, but it does have certain beliefs. As an individual, at a personal level I've always found it difficult taking on religious beliefs, so what I'm attracted to is the philosophical framework here. The term I used was the Moral Compass. It has it's eight points attached to it and we can remember those eight points.

Richard Aedy: Alright, let's walk through them briefly. What are the eight points?

Mark Pearson: The basic eight points are: 1. Right view, or understanding 2. Right intention 3. Right speech 4. Right action 5. Right livelihood 6. Right effort 7. Right mindfulness 8. Right concentration Now, each of these was actually spoken and then written in Buddhism as a means for training monks in spiritual integrity, but they are very easily adapted to one's life [and] also to journalism, as a moral code. It's basically saying, firstly, do you have the right understanding of the situation and with journalists that means research; it means have you really paused to explore this; have you spoken to enough people?

The right intent makes you stop to think about why are you actually doing this. What's driving this story? Is this a story that society really needs to be done, or is it just something that has commercial bang for you or your publisher?

Right speech is central to journalism. And speech, taken in it's broader sense of communication more generally: How are you actually getting this across? What forms of words and expression are you using? Not just for the out-put itself but also for the research - the words you are using in an interview.

Right action. What actual things are you doing along the way? Have you thought carefully about those? Now, there are rules about what you should or shouldn't do; you know, secret devices, and those sorts of things, but your actual actions in doing the story can go beyond those actual prescriptive rules or even laws. It can come down to what's the pretence upon which you've arranged to meet this person. What actions have you engaged in to even get the interview in the first place?

Richard Aedy: I'm wondering whether that is problematic, because, you know, if you think about Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer - the journalist and the people they interview always have different perspectives and agendas. That extends right up to a group of journalists who conduct a sting operation in which they pretend to be someone that they're not or offering something that they haven't got in order to expose criminal behaviour. Now, there have been some great stories that have come out of that.

Mark Pearson: That is the case. And that should not stop being the case. But, at least having thought through these 8 points and the code of ethics - if you think through each of them you may still conduct that sting, but you will have very, very good reasons and that's one of the biggest problems in the mainstream media with poor ethical decisions. There's very little articulate explaining and very few tools by which journalists and editors are able to explain their rational for making the decisions they made to do such stories. I think there could be much more of that. And I think the public not only deserves it but will start to demand that more.

- MEDIA report Podcast
- PDF: Towards ‘mindful journalism’: Applying Buddhism’s Eightfold Path as an ethical framework for modern journalism,
The International Journal of Communication Ethics (Vol 11, No 4 2014)
- Professor Mark Pearson, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

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