Race and the Media: Beyond Defensiveness

In this chapter, I will explore some of the features of the broad moral duty to eliminate racial injustice. I will attempt to articulate and critique some philosophical errors that someone might make about positive and open-ended moral duties, and which might help us to understand why, in spite of plentiful evidence, many individuals and organisations in the media seem to have formed the belief that they have done enough to discharge their duty to eliminate racial injustice. Ultimately the mistake lies in thinking that this duty is considerably weaker than the related, more straightforward, duty to simply avoid actions that are deliberately and unfairly racially discriminatory. Exposing these mistakes helps to establish precisely why this position is untenable. This is not a weak duty. The demands it makes of us are strong and urgent, and it is incumbent on the media as a whole to do much, much more to meet them.