It is instructive to note that in countries where there is a large degree of press freedom - in, the US and Scandinavian countries, for example, - the questions raised within journalism centre around not can I write this,, but should I?.
This sort of questioning has meant a long and distinguished _tradition of writing about media ethics, in books, journals and _magazines, especially in the US, and more imaginative ways of ensuring media accountability, such as the press Ombudsman in Scandinavia.
As with so much else, we are following a long way behind, but there are some signs of change and an increasing number of books concerned with media ethics are being published in this part of Europe.
Working journalists might find this trend somewhat embarrassing - they tell that old joke about the smallest book in the world being the book of media ethics - but in the debate about standards and accountability, media ethics are being taken seriously.
There is a perception that standards in the press are falling and that there is a greater need for accountability. Questions of press freedom, control, ownership, qguidelines, and libel are all now being debated. These issues do not throw up easy solutions, a fact some politicians have yet to grasp.
Unfortunately, in Britain, Ireland and other parts of Europe the question has not been how should a free press behave ethically, but what sort of regulation or law will ensure that the press behaves itself, and so the debate has been robbed of its complexity.
This collection of essays is an important contribution. ; It addresses a number of Irish issues, which is refreshing;, and it sees ethics in the context of the market and of ownership and also in terms of the subject's philosophical complexity. The question of the economic context in which journalism takes place is a central one. Journalists do not just chose choose to be unethical. The owner sets the tone and style of a newspaper or broadcasting organisation. One only has to recall the Sun before it was bought by Rupert Murdoch to be aware of the role of the proprietor in shaping ethical journalism.
This collection came out of a symposium at the Mater Dei institute in Dublin, now part of Dublin City University. It brought together scholars from mainly Catholic universities from around Europe. The nature of academic conference -going also explains why only one practitioner, Damien Kiberd, the editor of the Sunday Business Post, was included.
His essay gives a working _context that is missing in so many others, though his insistence that journalism is a trade rather than a profession is based on a rather narrow definition of a profession.
Dr John Horgan, of DCU, looks at issues of ownership and diversity in the context of the Commission on the Newspaper Industry, on which he served. It is instructive to see how proprietors defended their commercial interest with the shout of "Press Freedom", whenever ways to encourage diversity were suggested. Laws, rules and regulations are difficult to frame and more difficult to police when it comes to journalism. Press freedom, responsibility, the public interest, the right to know, sensationalism, and good or bad taste, are not issues that can be regulated easily by rules and laws.
It is this that makes media ethics a rewarding but problematic area of study. Marthe Lievens's contribution shows this. She looks at a number of codes of conduct and then tries to assess how they work as rules. She clearly has never heard of the National Union of Journalists's Ethics Council, which attempts to interpret the Code of Conduct.
She also makes the rather eccentric suggestion that the British Press Complaints Commission has the most useful code of ethics currently existing and even uses the word "inspirational" for a code that seems to change whenever there is a problem concerning the Royal Family, and which at least one observer has described as a confidence trick.
She is, however, spot on with regards to ethical education for journalists and journalism students.
Michael Foley is a lecturer in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a media commentator.