1 For a recent book of readings, see Belsey, Andrew and Chadwick, Ruth, eds., Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media, Professional Ethics Series (London: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar For a study of the social influence of the media, see Melvin, L. DeFleur and Sandra, J. Ball Rokeach, Theories of Mass Communication, 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 1989).Google Scholar

2 The idea of a journalistic duty to inform is defended by Klaidman, Stephen and Tom, L. Beauchamp in their book, The Virtuous Journalist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

3 Relativism is neither monolithic nor necessarily a menace but a term for a series of positions. Among the worrisome positions are extreme, simplistic versions of cultural relativism. Simplistic versions are too easily accepted by writers like Gans. See Rorty, Richard, “Putnam and the Relativistic Menace,” The Journal of Philosophy, 90, 9 (September 1993): 443–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 What becomes of epistemology and objectivity in a post-positivistic age has occupied many philosophers since Willard, V. Quine's groundbreaking work in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. rev., Logico-Philosophical Essays (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963)Google Scholar, and Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960). More recently, Hilary Putnam has espoused internal realism: a way between a metaphysical realism and cultural relativism. Truth depends on conceptual scheme but is nonetheless “real truth.” See his The Many Faces of Realism: The Paul Carus Lectures (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1987).

5 Neurath, Otto used the metaphor of the ship in “Foundations of the Social Sciences,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 2, 1, Foundations of the Unity of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 47Google Scholar, quoted in Koppelberg, Dirk, “Why and How to Naturalize Epistemology,” in Perspectives on Quine, edited by Robert, B. Barrett and Roger, F. Gibson (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), p. 203.Google Scholar

6 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism, The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 212.Google Scholar

7 For a survey of the cognitive error research, see John, H. HollandKeith, J. HolyoakRichard, E. Nisbett and Paul, R. Thagard, Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986).Google Scholar

8 Robert Nozick correctly argues that it is not sufficient to say we all see the world through our conceptual schemes. The important question is: in what specific ways do our conceptual schemes and standards distort? (Nozick, Robert, The Nature of Rationality [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], p. xiii).Google Scholar

9 Cohen's, view of applied philosophy is expressed in a book he edited, Philosophers at Work: An Introduction to the Issues and Practical Uses of Philosophy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Dryden Press, 1989).Google Scholar