BOOK REVIEW
BY TOM COOPER, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, VISUAL AND MEDIA ARTS, EMERSON COLLEGE
The Handbook of Global Ethics, edited by Stephen J.A. Ward and a team of sub-editors, is now available from Springer International Publishing both as a print book and as an e-book.
Ward has amazingly assembled a team of seven editors and seventy-seven authors from multiple countries and (sub)disciplines including such veteran leaders as Clifford Christians, Kathleen Culver, Ian Richards, Lance Keeble, Wendy Wyatt, Bob Picard, Robert Fortner, Brant Houston, Patrick Plaisance, Linda Steiner, Brian Winston, and Herman Wasserman. To this group, dozens of “rising stars” and “next-of-kin” astute voices have been added with wide representation across gender, race, geography, and contiguous fields.
The heavy-but-important tome is divided into seven areas, each with its own introduction by a sub-editor and a “further reading” listing, including:
The comprehensive and hyper-scholarly work concludes with a substantial index and is embedded with photos, links, citations, and notes.
Ward should be particularly congratulated not only for overseeing the editing of over 1,400 pages, but also for recruiting such talent, navigating the rapids with a challenging publisher, and writing seven of the chapters himself.
Moreover, he was able to encourage Clifford Christians, undoubtedly the senior and central pillar of the media ethics field, to be his “right hand man”
and co-editor throughout the project.
The first U.S. Media Ethics summit conference in Massachusetts in 1987 involved only 20 representatives from organizations and publications. Twenty years later at the second summit in Tennessee, twice as many organizations and publications were represented. Ward’s scope is a reminder of just how widely the field is expanding only 15 years later.
The publication stands alone with such wingspan, “who’s who” in the field status, and currency. It also reports the overview and outcomes of the largest media ethics project to date through which the United Nations assembled leading experts from all populated continents and provided curricula for students and faculty willing to participate at the college, high school, and elementary levels of education! (In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote that chapter and was the UN representative regarding media ethics.)
To my view, every library, communication or journalism department, and colleague who teaches communication or media ethics should own a copy of this new reference-cum-textbook and share it with their students.
If “Bible” derives from ancient Greek meaning “books” or “a book of books’, The Handbook of Global Ethics is a new “bible,” or Torah, or library-of-itself, or canon for the field, which well complements the many compilations, anthologies, reference texts and inventories which preceded it.
Congratulations to Stephen Ward, Clifford Christians, and their large and impressive team.
The book is available at sites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Deposit, and Springer Nature. Prices range from $374 (hard copy) and $341.85 (Kindle version) on Amazon to $299 (hardcover) at Barnes and Noble and $229.99 (both hardcover and e-book) at Springer International Publishing.
Go to Newsletter Contents
Ward has amazingly assembled a team of seven editors and seventy-seven authors from multiple countries and (sub)disciplines including such veteran leaders as Clifford Christians, Kathleen Culver, Ian Richards, Lance Keeble, Wendy Wyatt, Bob Picard, Robert Fortner, Brant Houston, Patrick Plaisance, Linda Steiner, Brian Winston, and Herman Wasserman. To this group, dozens of “rising stars” and “next-of-kin” astute voices have been added with wide representation across gender, race, geography, and contiguous fields.
The heavy-but-important tome is divided into seven areas, each with its own introduction by a sub-editor and a “further reading” listing, including:
- Concepts and Problems
- Approaches and Methods
- Digital and Social Media
- Global Issues for Global Media
- Freedom, Security, War, and Global Reporting
- Global Ethics and Journalism Practice, and
- Global Media Ethics in a Geographical Framework
The comprehensive and hyper-scholarly work concludes with a substantial index and is embedded with photos, links, citations, and notes.
Ward should be particularly congratulated not only for overseeing the editing of over 1,400 pages, but also for recruiting such talent, navigating the rapids with a challenging publisher, and writing seven of the chapters himself.
Moreover, he was able to encourage Clifford Christians, undoubtedly the senior and central pillar of the media ethics field, to be his “right hand man”
and co-editor throughout the project.
The first U.S. Media Ethics summit conference in Massachusetts in 1987 involved only 20 representatives from organizations and publications. Twenty years later at the second summit in Tennessee, twice as many organizations and publications were represented. Ward’s scope is a reminder of just how widely the field is expanding only 15 years later.
The publication stands alone with such wingspan, “who’s who” in the field status, and currency. It also reports the overview and outcomes of the largest media ethics project to date through which the United Nations assembled leading experts from all populated continents and provided curricula for students and faculty willing to participate at the college, high school, and elementary levels of education! (In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote that chapter and was the UN representative regarding media ethics.)
To my view, every library, communication or journalism department, and colleague who teaches communication or media ethics should own a copy of this new reference-cum-textbook and share it with their students.
If “Bible” derives from ancient Greek meaning “books” or “a book of books’, The Handbook of Global Ethics is a new “bible,” or Torah, or library-of-itself, or canon for the field, which well complements the many compilations, anthologies, reference texts and inventories which preceded it.
Congratulations to Stephen Ward, Clifford Christians, and their large and impressive team.
The book is available at sites such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Deposit, and Springer Nature. Prices range from $374 (hard copy) and $341.85 (Kindle version) on Amazon to $299 (hardcover) at Barnes and Noble and $229.99 (both hardcover and e-book) at Springer International Publishing.
Go to Newsletter Contents
