Mindful Journalism – thanks for the reviews

Thanks to colleagues Lisa Waller and Franz-Josef Eilers SVD for their recent reviews of our book Mindful Journalism in academic journals.

“This volume […] makes a significant international contribution to the discipline by demonstrating how a Buddhist approach can build understanding of journalism’s place in the world and its power, and be used to improve journalism practice.” —Lisa Waller, Australian Journalism Review 37(1)

“All in all, the book is an important contribution to the value of religions – here Buddhism – for journalism ethics though one might also argue that this is not only for journalists in the strict sense but for anybody involved in communication which is in a digital world almost everybody.” — Franz-Josef, svd, Journal of the Asian Research Center for Religion and Social Communication

Our book Mindful Journalism and News Ethics in the Digital Era: A Buddhist Approach (Shelton Gunaratne, Mark Pearson and Sugath Senarath eds; Routledge, NY) was published in February 2015.

Review copies are available from Routledge by filling out this request form. Please see the publisher’s synopsis.

The term ‘mindful journalism’ is a concept I introduced more than a year ago in the inaugural UNESCO World Press Freedom address at AUT University Auckland, drawing upon the earlier substantive work by my esteemed colleague (and lead editor of our book), Emeritus Professor Shelton Gunaratne, who has been working for decades on the intersection between Buddhism and journalism.

I developed my application of this in a paper to the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference in Dublin in July 2014, which was revised for publication as an article in Ethical Space published in December 2014.

It has been published as part of the Routledge New York Research in Journalism series. My key point was that one does not have to be a Buddhist to incorporate the key principles of mindful journalism into one’s work. In fact, most of these very moral principles are evident in the teachings of all the world’s great religions. However, for those who lack a moral framework for their ethical decision-making, a secular application of these non-theistic principles can offer a moral compass. They offer a series of normative or aspirational goals we can strive for, but rarely reach. They also provide a schema for the analysis of ethical decision-making by journalists.

Interested? You can read extracts from the book using the “Look Inside” interface at Amazon. Enjoy.

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Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.