CHAPTER III

ETHICS IN
COMMUNICATION
 WHAT IS ETHICS?
Is an area of philosophy that determines or judge
what is right or wrong. When applied to
communication, it speaks of communication within
specific ethical dimensions that asks the question:
Is the message helpful or harmful? Could it cause
distress or the least harm? Is it accurate and fair? Is
it truthful?
 Ethical communication aids in decision-
making, which includes structuring our
messages and choosing words that would
convey a message that are appropriate to any
given situation (Is a friend grieving? How do
you break bad news to somebody undergoing a
personal crisis?).
 Ethical Considerations in
Communication
Ethical communicators are respectful of their
audiences.
 When we communicate, we should bear in
mind that the other end of the process is a
human being with emotions, with feelings.
 In other words, that somebody at the other
end of the communication process is a HUMAN
PERSON who has a field of experience, a
breathing human being with inherent dignity, and
worth. They are not just cogs in the
communication wheel but are life-and-blood being
who have the capacity to feel, and thus get hurt.
Ethical communicators weigh the consequences of their
actions.
 We have heard of advice “Think before you
click”. We also have been repeatedly reminded that
we need to carefully weigh our words before
sending them out. That is because every word we
send out, every missile we fire off have degrees of
influence or impact in the lives of our audience.
 Thus, it is important to understand
CONTEXT before we out something,
because we do not and should not
communicate in vacuums.
 After considering the nature of our
audience, we need to consider further the
effect of our communication on them and
upon ourselves.
 For instance, before we chew out a non-
performing member in the group, we
should learn why they are acting in such a
manner. It pays to known context because
we might be unduly straining relationships
just because we forgot about tact.
 Ethical communicators are all about the
truth.
 Respect truth. We have heard of the phenomenon
of “FAKE NEWS” and “REVISIONISM”. The
former talks about news or a piece of information
that is inherently false but is peddled as true. The
latter is revising a fact, usually from history, to
sanitize nastier areas of the past.
 The lack of truth can lead of credibility,
and the lack of credibility can make us
lose our audience’s trust. When we are
caught lying or spreading misinformation
once too often, we cannot expect people to
trust the veracity of our data,
 Ethical communicators know how to
properly use information
Information, used properly, are of two kind:
adequate and accurate.
 Ethical communicators are those who are
properly armed with adequate information. There is
nothing more annoying, for instance, than a social
justice warrior who is ill-informed about an issue.
 Accurate information can be achieved by
constantly checking and cross-checking,
People tend to exaggerate their
contributions to a project; there is also a
phenomenon called yellow journalism, or
journalism that reports highly
sensationalized news.
Ethical communicators do not falsify information.
 distorting facts is one thing; making up
things is another.
 one way of falsifying information is
misrepresenting your academic credentials, or
your work experience to make it appear that
you are qualified for a position.
 plagiarism is another way of falsifying
information. Plagiarism is a form
intellectual dishonesty where one grabs
credit for a piece of work--a work of art, an
article, or a photograph, for instance---
without attributing the source.