Blog – What ethical responsibilities does an author have in using ‘ethos’ and ‘pathos’? Does our media, or our government, often live up to those ethical expectations.
An author has an ethical responsibility not to lie. Lying causes one to doubt the sincerity of anything else the author has written. Trust in what the author says is a very sacred thing, but it must be given automatically or else you wouldn't read what the author wrote. But if the author lies, they've broken that sacred trust of validity. That's not to say that one cannot lie in such situations as Patricia Hampl, but that must be fully understood by the reader.
Our government and media certainly do fail to live up to these ethical expectations. George Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bill Clinton said that he, "did not have sexual relations with (Monica Lewinsky)". These are just a couple of examples of the government lying to us. The media similarly lies too, Most recently an internet meme came about that truly exposed how lies occur all the time in the media.
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