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January 18, 2024 · 11:20 am

The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics – A Handbook for Australian Professionals

My latest book has been published, covering both media law and ethics for communication students and practitioners.

The Communicator’s Guide to Media Law and Ethics – A Handbook for Australian Professionals (Routledge, London and NY, 2023) offers an introduction to the key legal and ethical topics confronting Australian journalists and strategic communicators both at home and internationally and offers a suite of reflective techniques for navigating them.

It starts by positioning morals, ethics, and the law in their historical and philosophical frameworks by tracing the evolution of free expression and professional media ethics. Media law and ethics are then contextualised in their modern international human rights framework.

Readers are equipped with a skill set for reflecting on the law and ethics of professional media dilemmas – including mindful reflection, the Potter Box, journaling, concept mapping, and discussion.

Such approaches are then applied to key topic areas, including free expression; reputation; confidentiality; privacy; justice; intellectual property; national security; discrimination and harassment; and conflicted interests.

Each is examined in terms of its philosophical underpinnings, relationship to human rights, professional ethical context, international examples, legal principles, key Australian laws, legal cases, and strategies for applying reflective practice techniques. It concludes on a confident note – imploring communicators to engage in constructive and mindful strategic communication with the authority and confidence that results from a working knowledge of media law and ethics.

This handbook is for professional communicators and students in all fields, but particularly in journalism, public relations, corporate communication, media relations, and marketing.

Academics can request inspection copies here.

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.

© Mark Pearson 2024 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Filed under censorship, communication, cyberbullying, defamation, First Amendment, free expression, global journalism, journalism, journalism education, libel, media ethics, Media freedom, media law, Media regulation, online safety, Press freedom, social media

Tagged as communication-law-and-ethics, cyberbullying, defamation, ethics, free expression, freedom to communicate, investigative journalism, journalism, journalism education, Journalist's guide to media law, law, legal education, mark pearson, media, media law, news, online safety, professional values

May 23, 2023 · 12:49 pm

Abuse of Stan Grant highlights law and policy of cyberbullying and online harassment #MLGriff

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

The debate surrounding indigenous journalist Stan Grant standing down after harassment from some traditional media and cyberbullying underscores the importance of our research into the online safety of diverse journalists.

The research project by our joint team from Griffith University and Macquarie University was titled ‘Online Safety of Diverse Journalists’.

It was commissioned by Media Diversity Australia (MDA) and funded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Meta (Facebook), Google News Initiative, the e-Safety Commissioner and Twitter.

The main findings were well explained in this Conversation piece by my research colleagues Bronwyn Carlson, Susan Forde, Madi Day and Faith Valencia-Forester.

My role in the project was to write a law and policy summary about cyberbullying and online safety of diverse journalists and a 15,000 word appendix to the report.

The extended policy report (see Appendix A of the report) reviews the legal, regulatory and self-regulatory landscape of the online safety of diverse news media workers/journalists in Australia – that is, media workers living with disability, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and/or LGBTQIA+. It benchmarks those policies against comparable Western democracies.

The summary of the policy landscape in the area contains 28 key law and policy measures with varying utility and availability, ranging from international human rights instruments down to criminal laws of particular jurisdictions.