Living Ethics
Across Media Platforms
Michael Bugeja
Reviews and Awards
"This phosphorescent book puts communication ethics on a new order of magnitude. Living Ethics is destined to become a classic in the tradition of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics, Jacques Ellul's Propaganda, and Jean Baudrillard's Simulations. Brilliant in content and spectacular in research, a master teacher and public intellectual are at work here. Establishing ethics discourse across media platforms is exactly what the field needs in a technological age and we'll never be able to think about ethics in static terms again. With formalism discredited and relativism simplistic, Living Ethics is an ingenious alternative."--Clifford Christians, College of Communications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"This is an important book--a comprehensive look at media ethics, drawing on vital and pervasive concepts, and blessedly relevant to multiple media venues, not simply publishing, electronic media or digital media. Big ideas about responsibility, fairness, bias, temptation are connected to specific examples, some powerful, some homely, but all useful. This is at once a treatise for serious readers and a text for students and professionals in a world where convergence is not only conceptual, but also part of the lives of people who work across platforms too. A very useful contribution to the literature, building on and greatly amplifying an earlier edition."--Everette E. Dennis, Distinguished Felix E. Larkin Professor of Media & Entertainment Industries, Fordham Graduate School of Business
"Living Ethics is full of wisdom and insight, featuring both the philosophical foundations that underpin ethics and real-life examples about how to apply ethics in our morally converged world. Talk about relevant! Rather than hypotheticals, the book is filled with real stories about plagiarism, graphic video, satire, sexual harassment, photojournalism, and direct quotes. It's the best ethics book in communications."--Paul Parsons, Elon University
"The best thing about this book is that it refuses to accept the old adage about leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink. This book believes students can be taught both to understand ethics and to act ethically, and then outlines a way to do just that."--Gregory Lisby, Georgia State University
"[Bugeja] wants us to experience how it feels to have a guilty conscience, not just think about it in terms of an abstract philosophical framework. Such an emphasis has a place in the classroom because it calls for personal accountability."--Robin Riley, New Mexico State University