The principle of human dignity is also of primordial importance to communication
ethics across the globe. Different cultural traditions affirm human dignity in a
variety of ways, but together they insist that all human beings have sacred status
without exception. Native American discourse is steeped in reverence for life, an
interconnectedness among all living forms so that we live in solidarity with others
as equal constituents in the web of life. In communalistic societies, likute is loyalty
to the community’s reputation, to tribal honor. In Latin-American societies, insistence
on cultural identity is an affirmation of the unique worth of human beings. In
Islam, every person has the right to honor and a good reputation. In Confucius,veneration of authority is necessary because authorities are human beings of dignity.
Humans are a unique species, requiring from within itself regard for its members
as a whole.
From this perspective, one understands the ongoing vitality of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations General Assembly in
1948. As the preamble states: “Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, 1988, p. 1). Every child, woman, and man has sacred status, with no exceptions
for religion, class, gender, age, or ethnicity. The common sacredness of all
human beings regardless of merit or achievement is not only considered a fact but
is a shared commitment.
For two decades now, media ethicists have emphasized human dignity in working
on ethnic diversity, racist language in news, and sexism in advertising. Gender equality
in hiring and eliminating racism in organizational culture are no longer dismissed
as political correctness, but seen as moral imperatives. Human dignity takes seriously
the decisive contexts of gender, race, class, and religion. A community’s polychromatic
voices are understood to be essential for a healthy democracy.
Ethnic self-consciousness these days is considered essential to cultural vitality.
The world’s cultures each have a distinctive beauty. Indigenous languages and ethnicity
have come into their own. Culture is more salient at present than countries.
Rather than the melting-pot Americanization of the past century, immigrants now
insist on maintaining their culture, religion, and language. With identity politics
arising as the dominant issue in world affairs following the end of the cold war,
social institutions, including the media, are challenged to develop a healthy cultural
pluralism. Human dignity pushes us to comprehend the demands of cultural diversity,
and give up an individualistic morality of rights. The public sphere is conceived
as a mosaic of distinguishable communities, a plurality of ethnic identities intersecting
to form a social bond, but each seriously held and competitive as well.
Putting the principle of human dignity to work, Robert Entman and Andrew
Rojecki (2000) indicate how the race dimension of cultural pluralism ought to
move forward in the media. Race in twenty-first century United States remains a
preeminent issue, and their research indicates a broad array of White racial sentiments
toward African Americans as a group. They emphasize not the minority of
outright racists but the perplexed majority. On a continuum from comity (acceptance)
to ambivalence and then racism, a complex ambivalence most frequently
characterizes the majority (p. 21). Correcting White ignorance and dealing with
ambiguities appear to hold “considerable promise for enhancing racial comity”
(p. 21). The reality is, however, that ambivalence shades off into animosity most
easily and frequently. In Entman and Rojecki’s interviews, personal experiences of
Black effort and achievement tend to be discounted “in favor of television images,
often vague, of welfare cheats and Black violence. … The habits of local news – for
example, the rituals in covering crime – facilitate the construction of menacing
imagery” (p. 34). Rather than actively following human dignity and enhancing racial understanding among those most open to it, the media tend to tip “the balance
toward suspicion and even animosity among the ambivalent majority of
Americans” (p. 44). When the normative principle of human dignity becomes a
priority in the media, this important swing group would be enabled to move forward
and cultural pluralism would be enhanced.
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