"Ethics in Publishing: Are You Kidding?" was the subject chaired by Gordon Graham, Editor of LOGOS, The Journal of the World Book Community and an initiator of the International Communications Forum at the Congress of the International Publishers Association in Berlin on 22nd June 2004. Introducing the subject as a "tough assignment" he said:
Publishing is, of course, part of the world of business, and Ethics in business is a much-discussed subject these days. But publishing is a unique kind of business. We traffic in ideas and this places us at the centre of the business world, not its periphery. Reaching publishing decisions, we are obliged to make ethical judgments about our authors, their intentions and the substance of the man¬uscripts which are offered to us.
Anyway, what is ethics? It is the exercise of moral choice, the making of which may. or may not serve the dec¬ision maker's short-term interest, and which may, or may not, prove to have been in their long-term interest. After all, in principle, we are all ethical - aren't we? But ethics becomes complex when we are faced with practical decisions and seek a balance between what we publishers delicately call commerce and culture. or, more bluntly, self-interest and the public good.
Copyright is the one legal and moral question on which publishers are not only united, but active. Is this because copyright is our life's blood or because we believe infringe¬ments are morally wrong? Or both?
The defence of freedom to publish is beyond the means of the individual publisher and devolves on our professional associations. This is the only reason why it is approp¬riate that our topic is part of the deliberations of this congress. Associations can be no stronger than their members. There have been notable victories of which the publishing industry can be proud, but we should ask ourselves to what extent our collective actions are motivated by com¬mercial threats and to what extent by the conviction that a free and moral publishing industry is at the heart of a democratic society. To sum up, publishers are by definition in the vanguard of ethical practice. The responsibility has never been greater than it is today, because the boun¬daries between ethics and amorality have become blurred in so many directions and many people are deeply confused. Our five-hundred-year-old role as guardians and gatekeepers –- decision makers who, with our capital and our consciences, determine what the public should read – is under threat as never before.
We can divide this threat under three headings:
1. by governments, who are not necessarily authoritarian or oppressive. Democratic governments do sometimes challenge the independence of publishing and freedom of speech on al¬leged grounds of public interest.
2. by the Internet, insofar as it is used to challenge the principle of copyright and to undermine the role of the pub¬lisher as a conscientious intermediary between author and reader.
3. by ourselves, insofar as we subordinate the interests of authors and readers to those of our shareholders.”
Graham concluded:
So, if we publishers are to remain in this century responsible conduits of knowledge and ideas, we have to be alert to, and conscious of, our ethical responsibility. We have to demonstrate by our actions that we are a profes¬sion as well as a business. We have to be more proactive, and less reactive. In what looks increasingly like an age of moral decline, people are yearning for moral leadership in which publishers are uniquely equipped to play a part."
