Abstract:
Robert White’s paper titled “The moral foundations of media ethics in Africa” observes that a number of the analyses of media ethics in African contexts, have established, that journalists and other media workers are vacillating and inconsistent in following basic norms of ethical practice. This mainly because their practice is not anchored in an underlying moral foundation rooted in African values. So what are the stable, strong underlying values in contemporary African culture that would motivate journalists and others working public communication to be intelligent, consistent, unswerving in their ethical practice? White suggests what he calls “ethics of system awareness”. This paper sets out to review this concept of “ethics of system awareness”. Specifically this tries to respond to one question that has not received much attention from scholars of media of media ethics from Africa: Can ‘Ethics of System Awareness’ form a foundational African moral philosophy for Journalists?