Abstract

Feminist ethics aims to correct male-centered ethical methodologies and theories that under-value women’s moral thinking, deauthorize women as moral agents, and exclude women’s experiences as a source of moral reflection. Feminists refuse to try to deduce ethical codes from timeless rights; they resist abstract, disembodied, dislocated generalizations. This chapter derives a feminist approach to journalism ethics from four streams of work, including key concepts in feminist moral philosophy, particularly the ethics of care; feminist standpoint epistemology and its normative and methodological critique of objectivity; activist concerns with representation and language; and employees’ complaints about workplace discrimination and sexism. To illustrate the real-world implications for journalism, this chapter applies feminist journalism ethics to news coverage of work-related sexual harassment, especially harassment of women journalists.