It is hard to imagine a time in the distant past when the world was flooded with such a vast array of mostly equally represented or respected ethical beliefs. Beliefs that focused on the importance of the body as well as the mind, and that were centered around how we treat other people regardless of their background or traits – ethics for the other – as well as treating the earth with a heightened level of respect than we see now in many cultures.
One of the earliest examples of written societal rules and structures, Hammurabi’s Code, stated the need to establish justice, destroy evil, and prevent the strong from oppressing the poor. The story of the ‘Apiru escaping Egypt speaks to the liberation of the physical. The recurring theme of these ethical belief systems was how a human treats others.
The idea of modernity as superior is thought by Enrique Dussel and others to have stemmed from Indo-European religions and schools of thought. Valuing one’s spiritual and mental attributes over the physical makes the attitude toward the body be that it is less than. This “creates a negative attitude toward sexuality, domination of women, justification of domination of people, slavery, servants, and caste systems.”
Modernity, in many ways, has as a whole treated nature as an exploitable object rather than a force to be respected, honored, and used appropriately. When Christianity first developed it is thought to have been a counter to dominating ethics, but it quickly got adopted by the powerful and began being used as an excuse for excessive force. Europeans were able to be the first to exploit the Americas, allowing them to establish a monopoly which largely resulted in hegemony, with outlying cultures labeled as barbaric.
And ethics thereby becomes the last resort of humanity, which is in danger of becoming extinct as the result of its own actions. Perhaps only a solid co-responsibility with intersubjective validity, adequately grounded in the criterion of life-and-death truth, can help us successfully navigate the arduous path that is always close by. Such an ethics can make it possible for us to advance along the narrow edge, like acrobats on a high wire strung over the abyss of cynical ethical irresponsibility toward the victims — or fundamentalist, death-loving paranoia that leads to the collective suicide of humanity.
– Dussel
The ethics of liberation not only apply to people who have been systemically oppressed. It speaks to many facets of existence, but its role in the world of journalism pulls us back to the idea of “Harmonia” and where we truly are at with the methods and ideologies infused into the reporting that every single human does.
“Eurocentric media is a capital institution with market demands infused in all its content, from advertising to advertorials to press releases that are run as stories,” – Deidre Pike.
The five filters of the propaganda model, 1. Corporate ownership of media 2. Advertising 3. Sources 4. Flak and the enforcers slap our hands when we depart from the narrative 5. Ideology (must adore capitalism to continue to work at X corporation) all speak to the idea of manufacturing consent. Ethical liberation of media gets lost when these are the ways in which the media is run.
“The ethics of liberation does not seek to be an ethics for a minority, nor only for exceptional times of conflict and revolution. It aspires instead to be an ethics for everyday life from the perspective and in the interests of the immense majority” – Dussel.
Rob Wijnberg argues that journalistic objectivity is both a new construct and a vast misinterpretation of how media should ideally be. Journalism should focus less on objectivity as there are valid causes to advocate for and focus more on morality and integrity.
By leaving the position-taking to the public, we reduce our task as journalists to issuing press releases on behalf of elites. Today it’s more crucial than ever that journalism stands for something. We must commit to the values that are essential to a democratic society: to a check on power, to the pursuit of truth, to providing context and perspective. – Wijnberg.
Links to the four books Deidre Pike recommended in her lecture on Enrique Dussel’s ideas about liberatory ethics:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/ethics-of-liberation/
Links to a couple interesting articles on the topic of this post:
https://www.globethics.net/blogs/-/blogs/the-need-for-media-ethics-on-press-freedom-in-2022
Ruby Cayenne 
your post on media ethics of liberation is thought-provoking. it shows the role ethics in journalism has in social change and promoting justice. its nice to see media being used for good and not spreading rumors.
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Hello Ruby,
I appreciate your view on media ethics and ethics in general. Your statement “Modernity, in many ways, has as a whole treated nature as an exploitable object rather than a force to be respected, honored, and used appropriately,” cuts to the heart of it. Modernity has exploited people and the landscape for profit. Claiming ones needs to be greater than the others need to exist, all for profit.
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Ruby, I really loved reading your perspective on Dussel’s writings. We are constantly fed the idea of “ethics” through the lens of Eurocentric, Western thought. Many other societies have developed their own views on ethics, many of these perspectives value humanity, the body and mind, nature, and respect for those who are different from us. Western “ethics” however are often used to control others and give one group a sense of superiority over other groups. I also liked how you connected Dussel’s ideas to the concept of “manufactured consent.” We are constantly fed media that does not actually represent the vast majority, however we are led to believe that it does. In reality those with the most power control the messages that media feeds us.
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