Introduction

Ethical relativism, while covering up crime and fraud through logical ethical arguments, is a result of a three branch governing system that never anticipated audio and visual recordings documenting that the official leadership may put in writing one thing, yet does not abide by what is written.  For example, Rosauer's grocery food chain store at 14th avenue in Spokane, Washington might give the impression they provide respectful behaviour in the proximity of physically handicapped customers, yet in practice might encourage bullying through abusive gestures such as cattle prodding.

Moral accountability requires a fourth element in the check and balance of governance: forensic mass media investigations, documentation and reporting.

Followers of the faiths based on the Koran are prohibited from being the subject of photography and video recordings.  Religious extremists often cite these prohibitions to deny what are the facts, documented thanks to media journalism, that support criminal charges against religious terrorists acting under an ecumenical umbrella or a religious denomination.

What better way to fight extremism utilizing electronic technologies based on the Koran, for example Islamic State, than by instituting, finally, the fourth arm of governance, the mass media.  In an information technology age where any terrorist, cult or corporate Microsoft (TM) leader can illegally track your eye movement, identify your past life through your irises without your informed consent, your media use (internet, television, magazine subscriptions, e-mail, telephone communications, etc.), a protection of our constitutional guarantees to freedom of thought, movement, action, speech, observing, reading, reporting and other communication practices is urgently required to save us from an inherent failure in the design of the US government's allocation in the system of checks an balances in the deliberation and execution of power, and in redirecting or correcting previous abuse of power when current claims and federal or police files on citizens do not match up with reality.

Electronic media, including audio and visual recordings, and other measures such as GPS, satellitary surveillance, and Kirlian effects photography provide a fourth measure in the checks and balances design of governance, and as such should have its own place as governance by the people with proper certification for the people.

Professor Emeritus Val Limburg, author of "Electronic Media Ethics" (1994), was one of the earliest theorists promoting the idea that we in the media should constitute the fourth arm, or branch, of the government.  As a television news producer Professor Limburg understood that visual and audio documentation in journalism often contradicted the official statements from the three governing bodies of the United States, as formatted currently: executive; legislative; judicial.  Professor Limburg, as Alexis de Tocqueville predicted in "Democracy in America" (1840), knew that a monopoly of power could be hijacked from the legislative and judicial branches by the executive branch, under the president, under particularly constructed crisis situations, making the citizenry dependent on decisions solely made by the president.  A window into this particular weakness of our format was the Watergate scandal.  Revelation of the Oval Ofiice's presidential audio recordings of Richard M. Nixon and his scheemers in illegal surveillance of presidential re-election opponents opened up a possibility of scrutiny and evaluation by the citizens not through legal courts, police, nor Congressional inquiry, but through television and radio.  The United States Constitution and the constitutions of other democracies, never took into consideration the power of audio and visual recording in government related deliberations until the Watergate scandal.  Watergate revealed the inadequacy of a three branch system of government, executive, legislative, and judicial that was only prepared for written, published, and oral communication processes without accountability for what actually occurred, as is now scrutinized through audio and visual recordings and inter-action analysis in news journalism and communication studies.  Thanks to the electronic media we are able to monitor, investigate, test, report on and deliberate about judicial, legislative, and executive decisions, announcements and actions that often contradict each other.

I often had lengthy discussions with Professor Limburg, my academic advisor and mentor while I was employed as teaching assistant.  The references I make to Professor Limburg are in part included in his book "Electronic Media Ethics" (1994), and the rest are from our private discussions and from his teaching material.

Our greatest concern was how to have our students, colleagues, and leaders discern what is the morally correct decision and action to take in any given situation in a media world that wants to relegate morality to the garbage dump.  Ethical arguments are very logical, and that is their strength, persuasion.  What is ethical is what is argued logically, yet often because the facts are not reported properly what is a logical proposition is morally wrong.  Ethicists are not by rigeur good people, they just like to look above the law.

Behavior justified by an ethical argument is not per se moral behavior, even the NAZIs had ethical codes of behavior.