The Applicability Of Potter Box In Chinese Media

Despite some common virtues like faithfulness,honesty,bravery,and friendship,people have different ethical rules in different societies,In the real practices of communication,the media confronts ethical conflicts frequently.The media workers often confuse who to answer for when they deal with some big news events.Then they need to choose an appropriate ethic rule or reach a compromise among several rules to help them out.The Potter box is a relatively perfect model for making ethical decisions in the communication activities of America.Since has been developed by Ralph B.Potter.Jr in the 1950s,it is often used by communication ethics scholars,and makes great influence in their studies. In these two years,many Chinese scholars used Potter box to analyze single news event.These studies often do not see and analyze the Potter box as a whole,even consider its applicability in the Chinese culture,tn fact,there are several differences both in the cultures and the systems between the USA and China.So we cannot copy their measures completely.The Potter box works well in the USA,but it has obvious limitations in the Chinese communications.This paper uses the Potter box to analyze the ethical conflicts in some big communication events that reverberate throughout the nation in 2007 and analyze its capability in the Chinese media,so as to decide whether it can be the common ethical rule when Chinese reporters confront with ethical conflicts.We can search out its unique advantages and disadvantages by completely analyzing,study the difficulties when we use it in China,and then dig out the deep reasons.In the analyzing process,this paper will use some ethics theories like the Golden Mean of Aristotle,Categorical Imperative of Kant,and so on,to improve Potter box,and try to create a new ethical model that suits Chinese communication better.The main purpose is to ease or deal with the pressure of Chinese media workers when they lack of references to support them.