Showcase of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavors (SOURCE)

Ethics in the Global Village

Technological progress and far-reaching access to information have made media writer Marshall McLuhan’s prophesy of a global village a reality, but these advancements have introduced tremendous ethical complications to the field of international reporting. Mass media practitioners with the greatest reach are given the responsibility of interpreting natural disasters, human rights atrocities, soccer games and scenes of war on a global stage, as the world gathers around their televisions or smartphones to watch. Disparities in media coverage and a lack of native context leave a fractional picture of life beyond the reach of the Western world, and reporters in offices scattered across London and New York serve as the gatekeepers to information about countries they have never visited. The methods used to examine this issue in the following research included a comprehensive literature review focused on global media ethics and a textual analysis of three years of international news coverage regarding the country of South Sudan as reported by the New York Times. The research uncovered that sources local to South Sudan were used only a third of the time, and Western experts and reports dominated exponentially more space in the majority of articles. Additionally, reporters writing from South Sudan were far more likely to include local sources in their narratives than reporters located in Western cities across the globe. The purpose of this report is to emphasize the need for cosmopolitan journalism and greater local representation in the global news cycle.