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"Work deep in people's beliefs and world views."
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Profile in Leadership: Clifford G. Christians
2006 Missouri Honor Medal Recipient |
Clifford G. Christians taught a master class for Missouri Journalism students on Nov. 1, the same day that he received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.
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Front: Karen Brown Dunlap, president of The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.; Bill Kovach, founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists; Zubeida Jaffer, an acclaimed South African journalist; and Dean Mills, dean of the School. Back: Elson Floyd, president of the University of Missouri; Clifford Christians, an award-winning media ethics scholar; John Seigenthaler, founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center; Reza, photojournalist; Tom Rosenstiel, vice chairman of CCJ; Chuck Curtis, chairman of Valentine Radford/Square One Advertising, Kansas City; and Brady Deaton, chancellor of MU Columbia campus.
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By Sam Murphey
Clifford Christians' prolific research in media ethics and dedication to teaching earned him a 2006 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.
Except for a three-year stint writing for a religious magazine, Christians, who is a research professor of communication, professor of journalism and professor of media studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has devoted his entire career to the study of media ethics. Media ethics involves exploring the standards, values and philosophical principles that are intended to guide journalism, strategic communication and entertainment.
"I just don't recall that I've ever had a question mark on my life, wondering if I should try something else or thinking perhaps that this isn't as fulfilling of my gifts as I thought it would be," Christians says.
Not surprisingly, it was another teacher who first inspired Christians and set him on his career path decades ago.
Inspiration for a Life of Thinking
A seventh-grade teacher at a religious school first sparked the philosophical interests of the man who received the Missouri Honor Medal "in recognition of his seminal scholarship on issues of community, communications and ethics, and of his teaching, which has inspired generations of students."
"My teacher was really committed to international missions, as she called it," Christians says. "She had a heart for Nigeria, where our church happened to have a great deal of missionary endeavors, not just in preaching, but also in literacy, in education, in medicine."
From that time on, Christians says, he was interested in international missions. Although he earned a total of five academic degrees - two bachelor's, two master's and a doctorate - he pursued them all with the same goal in mind: to work in adult literacy and education in a missionary context.
Graduate Education and Beginning a Career
As a graduate student, however, the study of the intersection between philosophy, ethics, public life and communication within the public sphere intrigued Christians as well. So, when the University of Illinois offered him a teaching position after he finished his doctorate in 1974, he accepted.
"That has always driven my interest in media ethics," Christians says. "So, I still believe today, when we're facing new issues the question is, 'What does the philosophical reveal to us, to our understandings of justice, of human dignity, of no harm to the innocent?'"
Christians' devotion is steadfast not only to his discipline, but also to the University of Illinois.
"I'm loyal to the program," he says. "I've had no interest in leaving it or changing from the research and scholarship that dominates a research university like Missouri or Illinois."
That loyalty stems from his respect for the late James Carey, the man who built the interdisciplinary doctoral program in communication there and directed Christians' studies. Carey worked with Christians to design a course of study focusing not on any particular medium, but instead on questions of culture that surround the media in general.
"You don't study a medium by itself, but in the context of the society, the values, beliefs, worldviews that surround it," Christians says. "If you want to reform the media, or put it in a new direction, you have to work offline, deep in peoples' beliefs and worldviews."
Scholarship on Culture and Community
Much of Christians' work has examined the idea of general morality, which he describes as "what people believe about the world in the public arena." Often, he explains, message senders, such as journalists or public relations practitioners, understand ethics differently than public who receive messages. The differences in professional ethics and the general morality lead to confusion about what is acceptable in a society.
"My concern is that whether people in the fields of public communication know justice, human dignity," Christians says. "Do they understand ethics in the same way that the people they write to, communicate to, are struggling with questions of ethics?"
Rather than just studying professional standards, Christians says it is important to know the philosophical principles common to everyone. Christians often draws on his background in the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome to address these common principles.
People who spend their entire careers in a newsroom or at a public relations firm learn the strategies and mechanics of the media very well, Christians says. "But, in terms of the general morality and issues in the public arena regarding public life, there's still an enormous amount to learn. And that's what people in philosophical or theological ethics do all the time."
Throughout his career, Christians has changed the way he thinks about individuals and communities. Both individuals and communities can be prone to problems of self-interest, sexism or racism, he says. Universal ethical standards, such as truth, human dignity and nonviolence, can check the problems inherent in an individual or community, he says.
"In terms of my own thinking, I add universal principles not as the final step, but as a framework for coming back to community to judge how well we do in any of our public communication," Christians says.
A Professor's Motivation
As his career has developed and his way of thinking about the world has changed, one constant source has given Christians his greatest sense of accomplishment.
"I suppose all educators would say the same thing," he says. "That is, the students who take the basic ideas but develop them further or show the kind of leadership qualities in different parts of the world that you definitely believe are crucial. There is no greater satisfaction than that."
Working with students at the graduate level is particularly rewarding, he says, because he can work with them on the fundamental ideas and then encourage independent thinking.
"You're not interested in clones of your own work, but to see the students' imagination take hold. My goodness, that's just exciting, so rewarding," Christians says.
Respect for Colleagues and a Challenge for the Future
During his years of scholarship, Christians says he has been inspired by the ethics scholarship he has seen at the Missouri School of Journalism and his personal relationships with Missouri faculty members, such as Ed Lambeth, John Merrill, Lee Wilkins and Dean Mills, who studied with Christians while a doctoral student at Illinois.
Christians says he respects Missouri's school-wide commitment to ethics scholarship, a field administrators and other faculty sometimes overlook.
"I see a kind of institutional commitment here that I resonate with and benefit from," he says. "I hope that this major commitment to one kind of ethics, to media ethics, will start to give us a stronger voice in the professional world as a whole."
A monumental research agenda lies ahead for the next generation of communication ethicists, Christians says. Their primary challenge, he thinks, will be to take traditional ethical principles seriously while updating and redirecting the field.
"Most of us have seen the ethics that's been developed, from Aristotle to Immanuel Kant to John Stuart Mill, as being monocultural, male-oriented, Western in origin," he says.
Ethicists and philosophers must find a more inclusive way to think about their work.
"It seems to me that we've got more than a generation of work yet in global, intercultural, gender-inclusive ethics," he says.
And Clifford Christians, who has devoted his life to contemplating such tough questions, plans to be a part of that debate for years to come.
Related
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Sept. 27, 2006: Eight Journalism Leaders to Receive Preeminent Journalism Award Eight outstanding journalists and a leading journalism organization will receive one of the industry's highest awards: the prestigious Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. The School has awarded the medal annually since 1930. Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Sir Winston Churchill, Carol Loomis of Fortune magazine and Gordon Parks are among the distinguished journalists, advertising and public relations practitioners, business people, institutions and media organizations who have been recipients of this influential award. [More]
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