Professions and Ethics
Matt Levine wrote this article on the characteristics of professions like lawyers, journalists, data scientists and bankers. About lawyers, he says, these are their ethics: “Oversimplifying massively, the basic rule for a lawyer is that your obligations are to your client, and you have to act in her best interests, even if that is against the interests of accuracy; legal ethics is then mostly a set of exceptions to this principle.” Journalism, on the other hand, has the opposite set of ethics: “Oversimplifying massively, the basic rule for a journalist is that your obligations are to the public, and you should be accurate even if that is against the interests of the people you talk to; journalistic ethics is then mostly a set of exceptions to this principle.” If, like me, you are wondering how any of this can be called “ethics”, then you’re not alone. Levine clarifies: “It is weird to think of them as "ethics." They are both functional systems adapted to the wo...