Translators who work for various media spend much time discussing what to do the right thing is. Why is then that their audience quite often feels that there is something wrong with the “ethics” of the people engaged in the dissemination of news, information, and entertainment? Why do mass communication purveyors believe or act the way they do? Are they morally bound to observe special ethical norms that the rest of us are not, or, in fact, they feel free to cross over the basic moral principles the ordinary citizens have to adhere to so that they are allowed to a “free marketplace of ideas”? These are the questions we must ask ourselves if we are to be moral agents of the mass media.

This series of articles aims to inform bilingual professionals about the tools needed to make fair and moral decisions regarding the use of mass media, both as users of the media “products” and journalists or other media workers. We are sure that new Chinese Translation workers, Polish Translation and Arabic Translation workers who will be working on Medical Translation and Legal Translation issues will find a lot of useful information in this article. We have to state from the very beginning that the purpose of this article is not to rule what is “right” to do when handling situations. Instead, we will try to provide some suggestions of what seems to be “most appropriate” for a given situation. in doing so, our main concern is to concentrate both on the subject and on why the suggested action might be the most appropriate. We have done our best to answer many questions asked by the readers on our blog. We also try to give a complete and detailed explanation of each of them.

As one Vietnamese Translator worker who also contributed to this article suggested, after all you will be the one who has to draw conclusions as far as the answers you find most acceptable are concerned. We suppose that you will realize to a greater extent how difficult it is to make a moral decision. To say the least, you will have to construct a personal benchmark according to which you can evaluate your decisions.

Thus, this series of posts will focus on news media, advertising, and public relations. While translation workers are interested mainly in issues related to entertainment media, such as television and movie industry, the above three media are the most preferred choices by new college graduates with dual majors in Translation studies and Journalism or Communication. The experience gained by translation and interpretation workers in these three fields can be used in other forms of communication, information based or otherwise. Moreover, a Polish Translation member of our team has collected reams of information related to entertainment industry and its effect on culture all over the world. And, of course, volumes have been written to oppose the condition state of contemporary journalism in various societies. However, advertising, and especially, public relations, are often given cursory attention or – which is worse – compared with journalism, taking for granted that the moral postulates of the one will be valid for the other. Since that is rarely the case, this book is an attempt to outline the differences that exist among these three types of media in the hope of enhancing the development of sound and specific guidelines by which they may be analyzed and, if necessary, judged according to their specific functions. Finally, the principle of truth and minimizing harm should apply to all mass media, but to a different extent and for definitely different reasons.