assignment 1
On august 19th 2014 the terrorist group ISIS posted a video showing the beheading of photojournalist James Foley on YouTube.
Different media platforms shared the video and images of the beheading of James Foley, completely disregarding the privacy of Foley’s family in sharing such graphic images.
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A new movement started with the sharing of this video on twitter. People on twitter took the choice of not sharing the video by spreading out the hash tag #RespectJamesFoley
Foley’s family quickly published and emailed twitter saying that they need to have their privacy respected while they mourn their son’s loss.
Thus twitter removed from it’s platform all videos and images of the beheading of James Foley. The removal of the video from twitter can be justified in two theories. But first, Twitter is a broadcast media company, however they are different from any other media platform. They pride themselves on being an editorial free media platform. Which means users has the right to post and share whatever they want without any censorship whatsoever. Yet twitter stated that even though they have no editorial decisions, they have the right to remove and delete something if it is immediately linked to someone’s privacy. However, twitter’s privacy rules and regulations remain somewhat of a question mark to many. They are not completely clear which raises the question, if twitter claims to be different from any other media platform by keeping the flow of information going, then how come the video was removed?
The removal of the video, in my opinion, can be justified in two theories, from twitter’s point of view. The consequential theory: twitter removed the video on the basis that it is the ethical thing to do. By removing the video they are respecting the privacy and the request of Foley’s family. So twitter in this case only cared about achieving the greater good and outcome, regardless of the means. Because in this case the means and the way twitter just removed the video, depriving people of their freedom to express is not that ethical. The other theory applicable here is the virtue ethics theory: twitter as a media platform was caught between two choices, to remove the video and support the #RespectJamesFoley that was trending on their platform, suppress ISIS by removing the video and respecting Foley’s family. Or, to keep the video according to their statement about keeping thee flow of information on twitter and completely disregard the fact that it has graphic images and the fact that it is un ethical to ignore the family’s request. So twitter chose a common ground by removing the video from its platforms because by that it is only respecting the request of a mourning family. ISIS is a huge terrorist organization and their terrorist activities would certainly not be affected or lessened by the removal of this video. The conflict people raised in this case is that twitter did not have the right to remove such video from its platform. They accused twitter of loosing its credibility as a global media platform. But in my opinion twitter is a known company and they could have left the choice of not sharing the video up to the public. But after all this is up to them as a company. If they chose to remove something because it is directly linked to someone’s privacy then that makes twitter even more credible in my opinion.
