Being a media manager involves a lot of different aspects that are constantly “mashed” together that somehow creates the media industry. Due to all of the rapid change that occurs in the industry there is a huge competition and regular barriers, that differ in one aspect from another, are being breached every day. Alliances between different media companies get established constantly and a global marketplace for entertainment and information changes the managerial environment.

In the book “Management of Electronic Media” Alan Albarran (2010) conveys that a leader in the media industry no longer have the luxury to oversee one single operation. Today there are multiple stations that interlace with one another and there should be one single leader who has to lead, and who has to know everything there is to know about anything. Multitasking is therefore a highly desired quality that every leader must posses and cherish.

Being a media manager one makes decisions on regular basis, decisions that involve various things. Certain situations force managers to confront their morals and values and demand knowing what is the proper way to act. Being a leader one always must relate to and deal with ethics. However, even more challenging, being a leader in the media sector, there seem to be too many ways were matters can go wrong.

So what is ethics? According to Alan Albarran (2010) ethics is something that is concerned with basic questions of what is right or wrong. Ethics is a philosophy that deals with the moral aspects of life and reflects what the society thinks should be wrong or right. Every organization adopts its own code of ethics. These codes can be written or simply “found in the walls”.

Alan Albarran discusses the important parts of ethics in his book, and he has even dedicated an entire chapter to the subject, but I don’t think it is simple to teach ethics to future leaders. We all must look inside us to see how far we can go with our own morals and values.

I think it is indeed rather hard to deal with what is right and what is wrong. Occasionally you might know what is wrong, but acting right from the ethical point of view might just seem “inappropriate” for your business. As an editor in chief you might know that it is WRONG to publish the name of an offender, but by doing so you might be able to sell more copies. This dilemma is the real issue. How should we act? Making ethics, making money or making money in an ethical way, which certainly should be the best option?

As potential future leaders in the media industry we should ask ourselves these questions early on. We should try to learn ourselves in advance, to decide where we stand, where we want to draw the line and how we are going to do it. I realise that this is hard, it may be much harder than many other things in life. It may also take time to figure out weather any one of us feels as an ethical person or not and if we want to be ethical or simply “business-minded” or anything else. But I do believe in the power of human ethics. At the end of the day the good guys win and the bad ones lose. Therefore the proper ethical training of tomorrows leaders is extremely important. It will certainly help us to find the right way to do business and, at the same time, serve the society. So help us God!

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