Ethics is one of the crucial and vital subjects through which we can weigh the issue at hand and determine how well it aligns with its requirements and intended goals. Indeed, communicative practices in the media cannot be sound unless they rest upon an ethical framework that fosters and monitors them, ensuring the legitimacy of their actions in the public arena toward citizens. The fusion of communicative practices with ethics allows them to address strategic issues concerning the nation and its citizens, as well as everything related to the societal space, in a clear and lucid language far removed from populist discourses—discourses that lack communicative ethics whose sole goal and concern is sharing the truth about what occurs within the societal realm.

In our countries, advertising also plays a pivotal role in creating a "pluralistic" media. However, advertising has become a means of remote guidance and control, coupled with state control over printing presses and broadcast space. These soft powers are capable of disrupting media freedom and the right to free communication and information—unrestricted or unregulated by any rules except those universally recognized professional standards: objectivity and neutrality.

In light of this problem: Is it possible to conceive of media communication free from the pressures of remote control, including advertising? Is it possible to open a public, free, and interactive debate among media outlets of all kinds—print journalism, audiovisual media, and social media platforms—in the presence of censorship and control over broadcasting, printing, publishing, and website blocking? To what extent might such practices reinforce the dominance of single-minded thought and unilateral direction in an atmosphere intended to be pluralistic and democratic?

Prof. Dr. Ben Omar Yezli