The media comes last in Australia when it comes to perception of ethical behaviour, according to the Ethics Index 2020.
The latest Governance Institute of Australia’s index, a survey of 1,000 people’s attitudes to ethical conduct, shows the nation’s overall ethical rating soaring with a score of 52, up from 37 in 2019 .
This is Australia’s highest ethical rating in the five years the study has been conducted.
“Australians see our society as more ethical now than they did 12 months ago,” says Governance Institute CEO Megan Motto.
However, the Ethical Expectation Deficit – the difference between the level of ethical behavior we want to see and the actual level of ethical behavior – shows the media (-3) and finance (2) sectors were seen to be least ethical.
This is despite the media improving ranking in 2020 with net score moving to -3 from -14.
In the full index, with individual occupations and organisations taken into account, banking comes in below media.
At an organisational level, the large social media platforms were least ethical (-7 to -24), ranking just behind pay day lenders (-25).
Among media platforms, the ABC scores the highest for ethical behaviour and TikTok the lowest.
The following chart plots the scores Australians nominated for sectors. Media, and banking, finance and insurance see an improvement and now sit in the neutral, neither ethical nor unethical, space:
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