{"id":461,"date":"2015-06-06T16:59:15","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T16:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=461"},"modified":"2024-02-27T02:39:58","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T02:39:58","slug":"social-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/ethics\/social-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"ICT Ethics & Social responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nazis on trial in the Nuremberg, Germany courtroom, 1946.<\/p><\/div>\n

During the 2oth century,<\/strong> a new appreciation for the social and ethical\u00a0 responsibilities of the mass media emerged with an understanding of its power.\u00a0 In the 21st century, ethical codes for journalists would be sorely tested, and a reminder of these principles would often be needed.<\/p>\n

Information and Communication Technology Ethics<\/strong> – also\u00a0 known as information ethics — relates both to the social responsibility of traditional media and the ethics of new media technologies.<\/p>\n

Although new media technologies have enabled all kinds of positive collaborations, they have also liberated some of the darker sides of human nature in the form of hate speech between rival ethnic and social groups.<\/p>\n

Words can kill. When harsh words become hate speech, they can lead to discrimination, repression, or genocide. That\u2019s what happened in 1930s Germany, 1970s Cambodia, 1990s Bosnia and Rwanda, and Myanmar, South Sudan, and Congo in the 2010s. Hate speech built up through the mass media, and a deep stain on human history was the result.\u00a0 National and international organizations have urged the creation of new ethical and social responsibility codes for the mass media.<\/p>\n

The Nuremberg Principles<\/a>\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0 A set of guidelines for determining what constitutes a war crime, the Nuremberg Principles emerged from the post-WWII trials of Nazi government officials and their accomplices in the mass media.\u00a0\u00a0Especially important from the media standpoint is Principle VII which states, \u201cComplicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity \u2026 is a crime under international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one important case,\u00a0\u00a0Julius Streicher<\/a>, \u00a0editor of Dur Sturmer,<\/a>\u00a0was executed in 1946 for his 25-year\u00a0advocacy of genocide against Jewish people that led to \u00a0the Holocaust.\u00a0\u00a0Streicher \u00a0was not a member of the military and took no active part\u00a0in the events of the 1930s and 40s. \u00a0It was exclusively his role in influencing public opinion through his newspaper that he was included in\u00a0\u00a0the indictment of major war criminals of World War II and executed.<\/p>\n

Others who made films for the Nazis were imprisoned.\u00a0 Leni Rheifenstahl<\/a>, whose 1936\u00a0 Triumph of the Will\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 was a celebration of a Nazi rally, spent three years in detention.\u00a0 Fritz Hipper<\/a>, who made The Eternal Jew<\/a>\u00a0 in 1939 for the Nazis, spent two years in prison as a war criminal. \u00a0(For more information see the\u00a0Nuremberg Trials documentary.<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Hutchins Commission<\/a> <\/strong>\u2014 During and after World War II, questions about press responsibility led to a commission financed by Time Magazine publisher Henry Luce. Leading the commission was Robert Maynard Hutchins, then chancellor at the University of Chicago, whose ideas about education had focused on communication as central to a lifetime of learning. The Hutchins Commission found that freedom of expression had been imperiled by accelerating technology and by arrogant and irresponsible publishers. The commission urged publishers to \u201cregard themselves as common carriers of information and discussion\u201d and recommended five major points that it said society was entitled to demand of its press:<\/p>\n