Chapter 4: Social Justice

This chapter explains news media’s longstanding goal of serving the minority groups in society and a need for a more compassionate journalism. The chapter introduces four problems of social justice on a different scale but involving typical issues of justice nonetheless. In all cases, a responsible press is seen to play a critical role. All four situations assume that genuine social concerns are at stake and not just high-powered special-interest groups and authoritarian governments seeking their own ends. Each of the five examples pertains to the disenfranchised: refugees in the first case, the poor in the second, women in the third, and the victims of war in the fourth. In all cases, the reporters felt some measure of obligation. Although the news media’s response is sometimes extremely weak, no cause is dismissed out of hand by journalists in these situations.