Translation workers who work in media occupations spend a great deal of time talking about “doing the right thing.” Why is then that their audience quite often feels that there is something wrong with the “ethics” of the people engaged in the dissemination of news, information, and entertainment? What has led the purveyors of mass communication to believe and act the way they do? Do they have the ethical obligation to adhere to special behaviour norms that the rest of us may not observe, or, just the opposite, they feel free to avoid the basic moral tenets the rest citizens have to accepts so that they may have access to a “free marketplace of ideas”? These are the questions we must ask ourselves to formulate our opinion of the mass media ethics.

This series of articles is written to familiarize bilingual professionals with the tools needed to make honest and moral decisions regarding the use of mass media, both as consumers of the “products” of the media and a working professional in the field of journalism and other media. We think that new Chinese Translation workers, Polish Translation and Arabic Translation workers who will be working on such matters as Medical Translation and Legal Translation will benefit from this article most. We have to state from the very beginning that the purpose of this article is not to rule what is “right” to do when handling situations. Instead, we will try to provide some suggestions of what seems to be “most appropriate” for a given situation. In doing so, we pay special attention as to the subject and why the action might be most appropriate. We have seen to answering the numerous questions our blog readers have asked. Moreover, we fully explain each one at length.

As one Vietnamese to English Translator worker, who also contributed to this article said, after all it will be your responsibility to make conclusions regarding the responses you choose to accept. We hope that you will gain a greater understanding how difficult it is to make a moral decision. To say the least, you will have to construct a personal benchmark according to which you can evaluate your decisions.

Thus, this series of posts will focus on news media, advertising, and public relations. While translation workers are interested mainly in issues related to entertainment media, such as television and movie industry, the above three media are the most preferred choices by new college graduates with dual majors in Translation studies and Journalism or Communication. The experience gained by translation and interpretation workers who work in these three spheres can be applied to any other form of communication, information based or otherwise. In addition, one of our Polish Translation contributor has provided reams of information pertaining to the entertainment industry and its effect on culture throughout the world. And, of course, in different societies volumes have been written in opposition to the condition state of modern journalism. However, advertising and, especially public relations are often discussed briefly or – which is worse – compared with journalism, considering that the moral norms of the one are the same as of the other. Since that is rarely the case, this book is an attempt to outline the differences that exist among these three types of media in the hope of enhancing the development of sound and specific guidelines by which they may be analyzed and, if necessary, judged according to their specific functions. In the end, the principle of truth and the least harm should be the general rule for all mass media, but in differing doses and for definitely different reasons.