Role play: Does media have a “duty of care”? (VJI-M5-02-EN)

To encourage thinking about ethics in the media

• Students
• Adolescent youth

The lecturer divides the class into four groups representing different parties: media consumer, journalist, media producer (owner), and government regulator. The lecturer asks the students to role-play or debate the following themes: Does the media have a duty of care to be accurate? To whom does it owe this duty?

Other questions to explore might be:

• What is the media's duty of care to consumers?
• Can a media duty of care be governed, regulated or guided by legal decisions on duty of care in other circumstances?
• Does a duty of care apply differently to tabloid vs. traditional vs. openly biased vs. bought media outlets vs. any individualized social media outlet?
• Is the media's role to inflame, inform or sell media by any means chosen and how does this affect the duty of care?

Students should emphasize the primary ethical focus or expectations of their assigned group.

The lecturer can start or conclude the exercise by screening the TED Talk: “what happens when the media's priority is profit?” This talk addresses the obligations of media to be correct and truthful, and the media's duty of care to consumers.

• A projector connected to a device with an internet connection

• Peer disagreement as a fact-finding methodology

The lecturer opens the discussion with the above questions and then gently guides the groups to keep them focused. It is especially important that they maintain the focus of their assigned group and not let a different personal belief distract them. It is the learning from the exercise that is important, not that the student has to believe the position they are assigned.

UNODC. (n.d.). Integrity & Ethics: Exercises. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. https://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/integrity-ethics/module-10/exercises.html

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