WHY THE CIVIL SERVANTS ARE FAILING TO MEET THE BASIC NEEDS IN MALAWI By Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4 4th May, 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

The government of Malawi adopted and consented to observe the human rights terms in 1994. These terms were written down in the constitution of the Republic of Malawi. These Human Rights terms were extracted from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which was established in 1948 soon after the woes of Second World War (WW2).

And since that time when democracy weaved Malawi, the government has been trying to meet the rights of its citizens like its civil servants.

To begin with the government is doing a lot of activities to ensure observation of human rights of those who when employed by the government become civil servants. The government is providing jobs every year specifically more to ministry of health where nurses, doctors, clinicians and others are being employed; ministry of agriculture where agricultural practitioners are being employed, just to mention a few ministries.

The government of Malawi again does not freeze salaries-maintaining the same salaries for a long period of time.

The government also allows operation of Non Governmental Organizations to help meet enforcement of human rights both in the civil service as well as in the private sector. For example Federation for Disability Organizations in Malawi (FEDOMA) is fighting for fair treatment of disabled civil servants physically, socially, economically - thus for them to pocket what can make their lives manageable for example.

 But the fact is that although the government is doing all the activities mentioned above, civil servants still fail to meet their basic needs. Some of such practices and rights affected are discussed below.

The government of Malawi does not balance the remuneration package between those who are highly paid and those who are lowery paid. For example with recent broadcast by Zodiak Radio Station, the Chief Secretary of the treasury of the government Mr. Mwanamvekha pockets MK4.5 million a month yet a primary teacher pockets in MK18, 000 a month. Again it is expensive for civil servants to access loans from the commercial banks because they cannot stand collateral demand. For example, according to the latest statistical figure of the total number of civil servants which is about 169, 000, less than 9, 000 employees dominate by pocketing a lions share which enable them meet their basic needs with surpluses which meet their leisure expenses. Further more, apart from many receiving low salaries, the government increases tax each time it increases civil servants salaries and practically net salary does not significantly change by percentage.

The rights affected in this case therefore include right to economic issues. Low salaries of civil servants deny them exercise of right to economic activity. According to (The constitution of Malawi 2000: 18 section 29) every person shall have the right freely to engage in economic activity, to work and pursue a livelihood anywhere in Malawi. This right is however prolonged with civil servants difficulty to access bank loans as they fail to comply with collateral terms.

With low salaries to most civil servants means good and balanced diet cannot be met as even locally produced foods like fruits , meat, milk, cooking oil are exorbitant to repetitively buy for domestic consumption because of poor economic principles that are currently controlling this country. The World Health Organization recommends that balanced diet is a grand contributor to good health. And with the effects of HIV/AIDS pandemic means more money is needed to meet health related demands to meet proper medication apart from free ARV’s drugs that the government provides.

The right affected here is the right to medication. (ILO 2001: 16) argues that solidarity, care and support are critical elements that should guide a work place in responding to HIV/AIIDS. Mechanisms should be created to encourage openness, acceptance and support for those workers who disclose their HIV status, and ensure that they are not discriminated against nor stigmatized...Where health-care exist at the work place, appropriate treatment should be provided.

Another factor for example is that teachers, police officers, very few of them do manage educate their children and themselves. This is because they pocket in little to meet ever growing demands of education particularly secondary and college or university education. Such civil servants who are in majority their right to education is affected.

These civil servants lack health and clean water and proper accommodation. Here the right to health issues is affected.

Magnifying the fact that majority of civil servants do not meet their basic needs and comparing them to a few who meet their basic needs and manage to save excess for leisure, the right to equality here is affected. Discrimination of persons in any form is prohibited and all persons, under law, guaranteed equal and effective protection against discrimination on grounds of race, color, sex, language , religion, political or other opinion, nationality, ethnic and social origin, disability, property, birth or other status (Constitution of Malawi 2000: 16 section 20(1)).

Lastly, the empirical observation that majority of civil servants who are mostly located in rural areas fail to meet their basic needs like good shelter, good food, clean and health water, education and access to loans as another form of financial support; and considering that pension schemes are no longer reliable because of continuous slashes due to political selfishness, civil servants are denied the right to economic development. This is argued by the (Constitution of Malawi 2000: 18 section 30(1)) that all persons and people have a right to economic development and therefore to the enjoyment of economic, social, cultural and political development and women, children and the disabled in particular shall be given special consideration in the application of this right.

The observation of this discussion practically entails that with this situation hitting majority of civil servants, these civil servants wont deliver expert and professional service because their high effort will be transferred else where they can get a favorable package to add to what they get from government for survival and possibly economic growth.

Finally the government of Malawi in its democratic reign has to consider observation of the rights of civil servants as human beings. (www.unhchr.com) argues that respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms without distinction of any kind is a fundamental rule of international human rights law.

REFERENCES

The Government of Malawi. 2000. The Constitution of the Republic of Malawi. Lilongwe: PAC & Design Printers

International Labor Organization. 2001. An ILO code of practice on HIV/AIDS and the world of work. Geneva: International Labor Office. 

UNHCHR. 1948. Vienna Declaration and Program of Action. Accessed at http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huricda.nsf/(symbol)/A.CONF.157.23.En? [9/29/2006]

THE RELEVANCE OF PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING THEORY IN MALAWI By Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4 4th May, 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

Public Service Broadcast as it is with UK Broadcasting Research Unit (1981–1991), is relevant to Malawi because it can enhance media independence, professionalism, build trust and dependency, serve the public with social responsibility and design better ways of broadcaster survival.

To begin with the PSB theory has to be understood. There is no standard definition for public broadcasting, although a number of official bodies have attempted to identify key characteristics. Public-service broadcasters may transmit programming intended to inform, or of cultural value; the aim of much commercial broadcasting is to provide content that attracts a large audience, maximizing revenue from advertising and sponsorship. However, publicly funded broadcasters may transmit popular programs with little informational or cultural value and commercial broadcasters may be obliged by the terms of their license to transmit programs considered to be of value, but with appeal to only small audiences. The distinction between public and commercial is not always clear, for example, UK Channel 4 is ultimately publicly-owned but largely commercially self-funded, and transmits much entertainment but is subject to a public service remit.

However (www.en.wikipedia.org) in 1985, the UK Broadcasting Research Unit (1981–1991) defined public service broadcasting as involving

1. Geographic universality — The stations' broadcasts are available nationwide, with no exception. Generally, the "nationwide" criterion is satisfied by either having member stations across the country (as is the case with PBS) or, as is the case with most other public broadcasters around the world, the broadcaster's use of sufficient transmitters to broadcast nationwide (as with ABC Radio National across Australia).
2. Catering for all interests and tastes — as exemplified by the BBC's range of minority channels (BBC Four and BBC Radio 3).
3. Catering for minorities — much as above, but with racial and linguistic minorities. (For example S4C in Wales, BBC Asian Network, Radio-Canada, and Australia's multicultural Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)).
4. Concern for national identity and community — this essentially means that the stations mostly part-commission programmes from within the country, even if more expensive than importing shows.
5. Detachment from vested interests and government in which programming is impartial, and the broadcaster is not to be subject to control by advertisers or government. Even when a broadcast medium is removed from corporate and government interests, critics argue that it may nonetheless have a bias towards the values of certain groups, such as the middle class, the politics of the incumbent government, or in the case of partially or wholly commercially funded networks, the advertisers.
6. One broadcasting system to be directly funded by the corpus of users — For example, the licence fee in the case of the BBC, or member stations asking for donations in the case of PBS/NPR.
7. Competition in good programming rather than numbers — quality is the prime concern with a true public service broadcaster. Of course, in practice, ratings wars are rarely concerned with quality, although that may depend on how "quality" is defined.
8. Guidelines to liberate programme-makers and not restrict them — in the UK, guidelines, and not laws, govern what a programme-maker can and cannot do, although these guidelines can be backed up by hefty penalties.

Whether the Public Service Broadcaster wears the face of government or private sector, it will demand media independence. This term academically encompasses several ideas that all converge at allowing media practitioners exercise their thinking in the context of their profession and the readers. These practitioners need to design programs that reflect peoples or audience interest or values free from governement or advertisers vested interest. They also strive to meet the so called public interest in their daily operations that supports both taste of majority as well as minority but all driven to a common denominator. And eventually their independence will enable lead them into specialized strategic, administration and operational managerial activities for them to provide a quality service to the society they serve.

But the notion of media independence in Malawi whose system of government dwells on three arms of government thus Executive, Legislature and Judiciary; neither does entertain the demand nor allow the PSB theory be put in practice. This is because the media is still been forced to serve their vested political ideologies which collide with the principle of public service broadcasting. For example, the current Democratic Progressive Party is denying the media organizations media freedom. This is shown where reporters are being beaten and threatened, the party imposes itself on MACRA to enforce media organization to have one way thinking towards support of government of the day otherwise withdrawal of broadcasting licence, extreme control over MBC TV and Radios, amendment of section 64 where the minister of Information and Civic Educated is given mandate to stop operations of a media organization if found writing constructive advices against the president and his government. This is denying exercise of press freedoms which are put in writing is section 35-37. This is again in conflict with PSB’s factor 2 and 5.

The PSB theory also enhances media professionalism. This is because the theory indirectly demands quality services that have taste to both majority and minority groups in that society. This means social economics issues will have to be prepared and presented by specialized communicators who have a better background of the discipline through local and international development studies. This applies to other philosophical disciplines like medicine, politics, etc.

In most of programs that are aired or written in respective media organizations in Malawi lack taste and impact because the ones who prepare and present lack knowledge and competence of that field just because there serve no culture of specialization.

For example, one would like to watch a football match between Malawi and Egypt on Botswana TV rather than MBC TV although they all broadcast via satellite just because of accuracy, uniqueness, competence and knowledge expressed in the commentary. Commentary deals with people’s cognitive thinking mostly when they are watching and not people’s desires or emotions which are end products of psychological reaction. How can one make it the same being a presenter of TB, Youth and Women programs as well as a producer of prison life and parliament programs? This reflects lack of professionalism to master one or two philosophical disciplines which hold different systems of social sciences.  (Baran 2002: 375) discusses one of four important ideas that have to be recognized when understanding mass communication of which the second idea states that Mass communication theories are often borrowed from other fields of science. The social construction of reality theory (the cheese question) comes from sociology. Attitude change theory (the dime question) is borrowed from psychology. He continues to say that mass communication theorists adapt these borrowed theories to questions and issues in communication. People’s behavior with regard to issues more important than the size of the dime-democracy, ethnicity, government and gender roles, for example-is influenced by the attitudes and perceptions presented by our  mass media.

This specialization being a component of professionalism eventually will demand need for strategic, tactic and operational managers that collectively will manage quality service provision.

Public Broadcast Service which enhances media independence and professionalism builds trust and dependency of the public on media. The media messages become credible and trustworthy to many people even if those people can hold different ideologies. This is because the media ideals of communication remain being truthful, honest, ethical, decent and lawful all in umbrella of meaning making. This drives at media service of public interest which according to   (www.en.wikipedia.org) Public Interest theory is an economic theory first developed by Arthur Cecil Pigou that holds that regulation is supplied in response to the demand of the public for the correction of inefficient or inequitable market practices. Regulation is assumed initially to benefit society as whole rather than particular vested interests. The regulatory body is considered to represent the interest of the society in which it operates rather than the private interests of the regulators.

This public interest further come to reality when the media is cultured with social enhances fulfillment of media Social Responsibility Theory. This theory according to (Fedler 1978: 98) argues that media has the social responsibility of serving the public interest. The theory argues that media should remain free because it has responsibilities. The theory’s proponents argue that society grants the press certain rights, and that the press loses its claim to those rights if it abuses or fails to use them responsibly. The theory insists that the public has the right to be informed, and that the media have a responsibility to provide the information needed to be good citizen. The information must be accurate, fair, complete and untainted by the medias own biases. The social responsibility theory however insists that the press has the right to make honest mistakes, since errors are inevitable part of the learning process, but no to deliberately lie.

For example, most African top news or events that are enjoy maximum coverage relate with war, political strife, hunger, drought, disease and ill-health and less of entrepreneurship development and successes, improvement of talents, discoveries and opportunities. In Malawi, political collisions and HIV/AIDS issues enjoy most of media coverage just because they serve vested interests of masters who provide bread and batter for media survival. Some of these masters that dominate over media with their own interest regardless of media’s social responsibilities are government department and National Aids Commission and its auxiliary organizations; to the private sector are prominent advertisers like MTL, TNM, Airtel, etc.  Therefore if PSB theory can be put in practice in Malawi media space can be created which can be used to cover social economic issues affecting Malawi as developing country negatively as well as positively. Evidently there is no program on any of Television Program in Malawi that exposes local talent from rural to urban and to the outside of the country yet a an Airtel sponsored documentary of Ronaldo a Brazilian footballer whom many already know can be aired all week round on MBC TV; like wise there is no program to clearly inform the public about progresses and forecasts of mining industry in Malawi. Many Malawians only know that in Karonga, Mzimba and Rumphi and Mwanza districts there is Uranium and coal mines but do not know how much it sell and how the country is benefiting apart from other minerals like bauxite, oil, diamond, and precious stones like rubi just to mention a few. In addition, I sight that Malawi has 16 (presented as 160%) economic indicators of which include education, health, agriculture, trade and industry, information communication technology, unemployment, balance of payment, infrastructure, transport, mining, security, international relations, mechanics, talent, innovations and discoveries/inventions and politics but the media dominantly cover  politics, health agriculture and education representing 40% out of 160% coverage yet in that 40% covered shows no opportunities for economic growth nor construct better ways of improving and/or attracting international eyes, its all about reporting how poor Malawians are and reporting what United Nations Organization’s secretariat has decided and member states agreed to meet like the everlasting dream of Millennium Development Goals in Malawi. 

Even Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority in Communications Act 1998 put it in writing on section 45 - Regulation of Broadcasting that it shall regulate the broadcasting operations in Malawi with public interest. With a comparative view of Canada to Malawi, (www.unesco.org) argues that under the Canadian constitution, broadcasting is a matter of federal jurisdiction given its transcendent national significance. The broadcast regulatory regime was placed in proper context by the Federal Court of Appeal when it stated that, "the importance of broadcasting to the life of the country is reflected in Section 3(b) of the Broadcasting Act, which [provides] that ‘the Canadian broadcasting system should be effectively owned and controlled by Canadians so as to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fibre of Canada.’" (47) (Independent-Media Regulation). The cornerstone of the regulatory regime is the 1991 Broadcasting Act (BA) (48) which defines the basic mandate and philosophy for broadcasting in Canada, and creates an independent administrative agency, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to implement and administer the nation’s broadcasting policy. The BA also establishes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as Canada’s public service broadcasting organisation. This section will discuss the public mandate of the CBC, its services, and funding structures, as well as the regulatory relationships between the CBC as public service broadcasting organisation, the CRTC as broadcast regulator and Parliament as the ultimate arbiter of broadcast policy and practice.

Finally, PSB is relevant to Malawi because it can help government controlled broadcasters not to be directly controlled in decision making as well as funding. For example, MBC TV could be getting funding from tax payers money through levies like from Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi and Malawi Revenue Authority. At the same time it could survive on adverts which it does already. Like wise ZODIAK Broadcasting Service radio could subscribe certain programs to the public as a way of sourcing funding apart from adverts. But in practice for the public to directly support a program or an event, this theory of PSB has to be flooded to the public through broadcast service to prove and convince individuals. And when individual start to contribute finances to fund a particular program, there is need for that broadcaster to show ethical and honest conduct in management of the finances and the content and technical expertise of the program has to reflect the amount funded. This scenario has just blasted Reach Out and Touch program at MBC TV which was running on individual contributions from all regions of Malawi and it is reported that the Director General embezzled such finances and currently is on forced leave. This though not officially announced it has already affected negatively the trust and dependency that the public put on MBC TV.

This is how PSB can be of relevant to Malawi as a developing country directly to media and the public.

REFERENCES

Baran, SJ. (2002). Introduction to Mass Communication. 2^nd edition. Boston, McGraw Hill.

Fedler, F. (1978). Introduction to Mass Media. New York-Harcourt Base, Janvavid Inc.

Mendel, T. 2000. Public Service Broadcasting. A comparative Legal Survey - Kuala Lumpur: UNESCO, Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development. Accessed at

http://www.unesco.org/webworld/publications/mendel/canada.html. [29/07/11]

Wikipedia (2011). Defining Public Service Broadcasting. Accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_broadcasting. [26/07/11]

Wikipedia (2011).  Public interest. Accessed at  theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest_theory. [30/07/11]

ETHICS IN EDITINGBy Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4 4th May, 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

Definitions and Backgrounds

The most common way of defining "ethics": norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior (www.niehs.nih.gov).

Media ethics are a complex topic because they deal with an institution that must do things that ordinary people in ordinary circumstances would not do. Media ethics draw on a range of philosophical principles, including basic Judeo-Christian values, Aristotle’s ideas about virtue and balanced behaviors (the golden mean), Kant’s categorical imperative, Mill’s principle of utility, Rawls’s veil of ignorance, and the Hutchins Commission’s social-responsibility ethics. One way contemporary journalists can resolve their ethical problems is by using the Bok model for ethical decision making.

Reporters face a range of ethical issues on a regular basis. Those issues include the following:

• Truthfulness. Journalists need to make a commitment to telling the truth. This includes not giving false or made-up reports, and telling truthful stories that are not intended to deceive the audience. This may require reporters to provide not only the facts but also the context surrounding them. Truthfulness requires a commitment not only from the journalist but also from the organization he or she works for.
• Conflicts of interest. The interests of a corporation that owns a news organization may sometimes be at odds with the nature of the news being reported. Journalists need to be careful not only to portray their parent company in an accurate light but also to give no special favors to companies connected to the organization’s parent company.
• Sensationalism. News organizations sometimes emphasize news that is interesting but unimportant. This happens when reporters put more effort into attracting and pleasing an audience than into reporting on the critical issues of the day. This can happen because of the increased pace of the news business brought about by cable television, the Internet, and the parent company’s desire for profits.
• Authenticity and appropriateness of photographs. Photos can be among the most controversial media materials, both because of their disturbing content and because they can be altered with digital editing tools.

Journalists and their employers can apply a variety of methods for enforcing and implementing ethical behavior. These include employing an ombudsman, requiring commitment to ethical behavior on the part of all employees, and adhering to a code of ethics.

The advertising industry became concerned with protecting its image during World War II. Among the major ethical issues in advertising are the following:

• Truthfulness. How important is it that claims such as “Tastes great” or “It’s the best” can be demonstrably true?
• Taste. Is it appropriate for ads to attract attention by shocking audiences?
• Media control. Do advertisers have a right to control the editorial material that surrounds their advertisements?

In the public relations industry, practitioners need to work at balancing their clients’ interests against those of the public at large. This can become problematic when a client is attempting to influence the public to support an issue such as going to war.

Ethics also advocates for equality. No biased writing and publishing of news stories. This takes the position of egalitarianism which according to (www. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egalitarianism.com) Egalitarianism (from French égal, meaning "equal") is a belief of thought that favors equality of some sort. Its general premise is that people should be treated as equals on certain dimensions such as race, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, economic status, social status, and cultural heritage. Egalitarian doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status. In large part, it is a response to the abuses of statist development and has two distinct definitions in modern English. It is defined either as a political doctrine that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social, and civil rights or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people or the decentralization of power. An egalitarian believes that equality reflects the natural state of humanity. Egalitarianism is the opposite of elitism.

Whenever you change to improve your copy, you’re editing. The editing process involves cooperation among reporters, section editors, and copy editors. It takes team works and time. Teamwork and time will make your copy perfect. The process of editing copy occurs in several phases. The final phase of editing before it’s dropped into pages is called copyediting (Levin 2000: 120).

Editing is done for several reasons. The major reasons are:

Ethics; where communicators behavior towards job conduct abide by truth telling, accuracy, honest, fairness, transparency, none-discrimination, unbiased, etc.

Laws; where matters of contempt of court, defamation, privacy, obscenity and indecent, etc,

Grammar and Language; where matters of language rules, punctuation and sentence structure, and

Style; mostly for unique identification of the news paper for example that are considered.

Importance of ethics in editing

Ethics are important in editing mainly because they guide professional conduct of editors and newsroom team and enable a desired approach towards legal application.

For example, (www.vjmevement.com) argues that Ethics in editing are important because they guide the journalistic manner to a favorable and desired taste of practice and position their work with trust which reflects credibility because of the following:

Accuracy

• Pursue comprehensive, accurate, careful and balanced reporting and interpretation of the facts within context.
• Present information in clear, precise language.
• Use first-hand sources wherever possible.
• Clearly cite sources and verify their claims and allegations, stating whenever verification is not possible.
• Avoid unfounded speculation.
• Avoid sources that knowingly or recklessly provide false information.
• Validate the authenticity of all footage.

Fairness

• Strive to represent accurately, thoroughly, and without bias all perspectives on an issue.
• Treat sources and the public with decency.
• Strive to minimize harm.
• Take every possible effort to allow an individual that is the subject of negative assertions in a story to respond to those assertions.
• Translate language to accurately and clearly convey the meaning of a person's speech, and accurately translate the words of a public figure. Honor the boundary between pursuit of the story and an individual's right to privacy.
• Act responsibly when interviewing children under 18 years old and editing those interviews.

Honesty

• Distinguish between fact and opinion.
• Do not plagiarize or otherwise deceive by presenting the works of others as our own. Attribute all facts originally reported by another organization.
• Do not edit information in ways that distorts its meaning.
• Avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest that could compromise credibility, and disclose any unavoidable conflicts of interest.
• Grant anonymity to sources only in rare, individual instances where to do otherwise would place them at grave risk.
• Maintain independence and do not allow subjects or third parties to edit stories before publication or otherwise censor reports.
• Do not deceive in the pursuit of information, nor use our positions as VJ Movement staff or contributors to make inquiries that fall outside the boundaries of The VJ Movement work.

Transparency

• Admit mistakes and act in a timely manner to both correct them and prevent them from happening again.
• Publish self-profiles that reveal relevant information about the journalist's background and motivations for reporting stories.

Relationship between ethics and the law

There is a big relationship between ethics and law. This is because ethics ensure that behavior and conduct towards the job of news gathering and editing should be within accepted and desired taste and have a proper application of legal demands.

For example ethical application will enhance editors to be lawful in editing in which matters of contempt of court, defamation, privacy, obscenity and indecent, etc, interfere much with editing principles and media conceptual theories like public interest, public service broadcasting, social responsibility, constructionist, normative just to mention a few will be controlled and served accordingly. However it has to be communicated that not all ethical editing efforts can be legal and vice versa. For example it may be ethical to publish government malpractice to serve the right to know but may be illegal to publicize government private information.

However, the laws of privacy and defamation often conflict with editing. According to (Carey et al 2007: 39) defamation is the publication to a third party of matter which in all circumstances would be likely to affect a person adversely in the estimation of reasonable people generally. This comes in two forms, libel-written or recorded statement(s) either criminal or civil and slander-spoken statement(s).

Libel for example which has defenses at most being truth has grave consequences to a media organization. A media organization can lose credibility, can cost organization money, may lose existing and potential and liable news sources and may affect close members’ family stability and sometimes jobs and property. 

 How Malawian media organization can enjoy ethics amidst power clashes for ideological dominance

But although media editing task risks conflict with laws even if it may be ethical to serve the public tight to know and information through social responsibility and public interest concepts, it is necessary for editors to realize that they serve different ideological powers that all race for dominance in the society. The ruling party would be willing to maximize its national legitimacy but all racing against opposition parties; Muslims may be trying to prove they understand God principles better than Christians do; Airtel may be racing against TNM; the rich against the poor; the believers against the pagans, etc.

With this realization, the news organization has to consider need to have in-house lawyer who may be advising on matters or issues like pictures or stories that raise questions of breach of watchful laws before the news can be published.

Conclusion

It is therefore important for editors to lean more on how ethics and laws have to conform to editing interest. And to have the code of conduct and in-house legal practitioner may be necessary for a media organization to enhance editing efforts and tasks without conflicting with ethical and legal issues.

Recommendations

With professional knowledge therefore for editors to ensure that they are conducting the editing duty with Ethical behavior apart from legal behavior, editors have to follow a model. This model includes 10 points that have to be considered.

1.                            What bothers me about this story or picture?

2.                              What do my colleagues think?

3.                              Is the story complete?

4.                              What is the good and what is the harm?

5.                              Is there a conflict of interest

6.                              Does the story rely on unnamed sources or deception?

7.                              How will my audience react?

8.                              Does timing matter?

9.                              Is there any middle ground?

10.                          Should we explain our decision?

REFERENCES

Carey, P et al .2007. Media Law. 4^th edition. London: Thomson.

Levin, M.  2000. Handbook for Journalists-A Handbook for Journalists. Chicago: National Textbook Company

JVMovement. 2011. Ethics. Accessed at www.vjmovement.com/ethics - [29th July, 2011]

Resnik, DB. 2011. Defining Ethics. Accessed at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis.cfm [10th August, 2011]

Richard, A.2002, "Egalitarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002.) Accessed at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egalitarianism. [29th July, 2011]