60 Minutes & Dr. Jack Kevorkian This research paper

Basic Facts Concerning 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes is a television newsmagazine which is owned outright by CBS Inc., a publicly-owned corporation, and which has been presented on prime time since 1972. It has consistently been among the top ten in Nielsen ratings. Due to competition from cable television networks and perhaps a declining taste of the viewing public for hard news, the audience for the evening news broadcasts has declined from 37.3 percent of the home viewing public in 1988 to 24.3 percent in 1996-1997 (Hickey 33). 60 Minutes has assumed greater financial importance to CBS because CBS News as a whole loses money while 60 Minutes proved that "a news program could be a colossal money maker" (Hickey 33).

In recent decades, the increasing corporatization of the news media, concentration of ownership of news media in financial conglomerates and various competitive pressures have all led to strong pressures on news departments to improve their operating res

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e of meeting one's social responsibility" (3). Or, as Irving Kristol said, "it is a confession of moral bankruptcy to assert that what the law does not explicitly prohibit is therefore morally permissible . . . businessmen have come to think that the conduct of business is a purely 'economic' activity, to be judged by economic criteria, and that moral and religious traditions exist in a world apart, to be visited on Sundays perhaps" (180). According to Elliott, "journalistic ethics . . . address problems concerning the behavior of . . . any . . . professional involved in the production and distribution of news" (2). What are the applicable standards and how do they apply to the Kevorkian broadcast? Media Responsibility In 1947, Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago pioneered the idea that the media had social responsibility and was accountable to the public when it failed to meet those responsibilities. The difficulty is in defining what those responsibilities are and in determining when they have not been met. The journalistic profession has adopted various codes of ethics which set forth the objective. The Statement of Principles of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) which was adopted in 1975 (replacin
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Approximate Word count = 3640
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)