The eleventh edition of this authoritative book focuses on the most pressing media ethics issues, including coverage of the 2024 elections and the emergence of AI. Enabling students to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment, the book focuses on practical ethical theory for use across the media curriculum.

For Students

This open-access Companion Website is designed to reinforce and expand the concepts covered in Media Ethics, 11th Edition. Here you will find 66 cases from the eighth, ninth, and tenth editions of the book. While these cases are not as recent as the ones in your textbook, they provide further context to discuss ethical issues in media.

For Professors

To deepen students' understanding of ethical issues, you will find three interactive exercises. Adrole and Privacy Role are roleplaying exercises. Ad Watch helps students analyze political ads in ethical frameworks and is supported with PowerPoint slides. Chapter PowerPoint slides, essay questions and guides on the best practice for using discussion questions are also included.

Please note the instructor resources are password protected and available to teaching professionals only. Please click the link below to log in or request access.

Go to Instructor resources »

Case Library Contents

(Note that cases are grouped according to the current edition's organization but retain labels from the chapter numbers in the editions in which the cases originally appeared.)

Chapter 2: Information Ethics: A Profession Seeks the Truth

• 8E Case 2A. Are There Limits to Free Speech: Alex Jones and InfoWars
• 9E Case 2C. News and the Transparency Standard
• 9E Case 2D. Can I Quote Me on That?
• 9E Case 2E. NPR, the NYT, and Working Conditions in China
• 9E Case 2G. Is It News Yet?
• 9E Case 2H. What's Yours Is Mine: The Ethics of News Aggregation
• 10E Case 2C. Dr. Doolittle Not: Debunking Fake Animal Stories
• 10E Case 2E. Death As Content: Social Responsibility and the Documentary Filmmaker

Chapter 3: Privacy: Looking for Solitude in the Global Village

• 8E Case 5A. Anderson Cooper's Not-So-Private Life
• 8E Case 5B. Facebook: Should You Opt In or Out?
• 9E Case 5B. Concussion Bounty: Is It Ever Worth Violating?
• 9E Case 5C. Joe Mixon: How Do We Report on Domestic Violence in Sports?
• 9E Case 5G. Politics and Money: What's Private and What's Not?
• 10E Case 5E. Looking for Richard Simmons
• 10E Case 5F. Children and Framing: The Use of Children's Images in an Anti-Same-Sex Marriage Ad

Chapter 4: Loyalty: Choosing Between Competing Allegiances

• 8E Case 4B. What Would Socrates Have Done? The Disappearance of Hillary Clinton
• 9E Case 4A. Fair or Foul: Reporter/Player Relationship in the Sports Beat
• 9E Case 4E. Whose Facebook Page Is It Anyway?
• 9E Case 4H. How One Tweet Ruined a Life
• 10E Case 4A. Cuomo Interviews Cuomo
• 10E Case 4C. Public/On-Air Journalist vs. Private/Online Life: Can It Work?

Chapter 5: Mass Media in a Democratic Society: Keeping a Promise

• 9E Case 6A. Reporting on Rumors: When Should a News Organization Debunk?
• 9E Case 6C. The Truth about the Facts: Politifact.com
• 9E Case 6D. Wikileaks
• 9E Case 6E. Control Room: Do Culture and History Matter In Reporting the News?
• 9E Case 6F. Victims and the Press

Chapter 6: Informing a Just Society

• 8E Case 9E. Born Just Right: The Mom Support Blog
• 8E Case 9G. Looking for Truth Behind the Wal-Mart Blogs
• 9E Case 9B. 12th and Clairmount: A Newspaper's Foray into Documenting a Pivotal Summer
• 9E Case 9D Feminist Fault Lines: Political Memoirs and Hillary Clinton
• 10E Case 6A. The Kansas City Star in Black and White: A Newspaper Apologizes For 140 Years of Coverage
• 10E Case 6E. Cincinnati Enquirer's Heroin Beat
• 10E Case 6F. GoldieBlox: Building A Future on Theft

Chapter 7: Strategic Communication: Does Client Advocate Mean Consumer Adversary?

• 8E Case 3B. YELP!!! Consumer Empowerment or Small Business Extortion?
• 8E Case 3C. The Facts behind the Ads: Oregon Changes a Campaign
• 8E Case 3D. Taking It for a Spin: Accepting Product Samples in the Newsroom
• 8E Case 3E. Getting the Story, Getting Arrested: Photojournalism and Activism
• 9E Case 3B. Cleaning Up Their Act: The Chipotle Food Safety Crisis
• 9E Case 3F. Sponsorships, Sins, and Public Relations: What Are the Boundaries?
• 9E Case 3G. A Charity Drops the Ball
• 10E Case 7E. Between a (Kid) Rock and a Hard Place
• 10E Case 7F. Was That an Apple Computer I Saw? Product Placement in the United States and Abroad

Chapter 8: Picture This: Technology, Visual Information, and Evolving Standards

• 8E Case 8A. The Case of the Well-Documented Suicide
• 8E Case 8B. Manipulating News Photos: Is It Ever Justified?
• 9E Case 8A. Killing a Journalist On-Air: A Means/Ends Test
• 9E Case 8F. Photographing Funerals of Fallen Soldiers
• 10E Case 8F. Horror in Soweto

Chapter 9: Media Economics: The Deadline Meets the Bottom Line

• 8E Case 7A. Who Needs Advertising? Groupon
• 8E Case 7B. Netflix: Not So Fast… A Response to Customer Furor
• 8E Case 7C. Outsourcing the News
• 8E Case 7D. Is A Picture Only Worth the 1,000 Words You Agree With?
• 9E Case 7A. Murdoch's Mess
• 9E Case 7E. Transparency in Fundraising: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Standard
• 9E Case 7F. News Now, Facts Later
• 9E Case 7G. Crossing the Line? The Los Angeles Times and the Staples Affair
• 10E Case 9A. Twitter's Trump Problem
• 10E Case 9C. And the Oscar Rejects… Frida Mom

Chapter 10: Ethical Dimensions of Art and Entertainment

• 8E Case 10B. Bob Costas and Jerry Sandusky: Is Sports Entertainment or Journalism?
• 8E Case 10E. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, and Suri Cruise: Do Celebrities Have Privacy?
• 8E Case 10F. Who Is America?
• 9E Case 10C. Daily Dose of Civic Discourse
• 9E Case 10E. Hate Radio: The Outer Limits of Tasteful Broadcasting
• 9E Case 10F. Searching for Sugar Man: Rediscovered Art
• 10E Case 10A. Documenting Culture Clash in American Factory
• 10E Case 10B. The Daily Show's One-Client Legal Team
• 10E Case 10E. To Die For: Making Terrorists of Gamers in Modern Warfare 2