The Categorical Imperative
One of the greatest achievements in the history of ethics is the Golden Rule:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
It feels intuitively right and can easily be applied in everyday life.
However, as a universal legal principle, the Golden Rule quickly runs into problems.
Imagine a criminal telling the judge: “If you don’t want to be thrown in prison yourself, then, by the Golden Rule, you shouldn’t imprison me either.”
This appeal to self-interest reveals why the rule can lead to contradictions and become unworkable in specific cases.
To overcome this, Immanuel Kant developed the categorical imperative — a way to judge actions beyond individual self-interest.
He formulated it as:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Later, he rephrased it as:
“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.”
The Confused Bureaucrat
This ethical rule allows us to evaluate behavior rationally, without appealing to divine authority or absolute law.
Yet it doesn’t guarantee a moral judgment — only a defensible one, based on what is believed to be true at the time.
Take, for example, a Communist Party official wondering whether to report his neighbor — who made a joke about the Great Leader — as a threat to the state.
If the official sincerely believes that his neighbor’s humor endangers the perfect ethical order, and that he himself would report his own jokes under the same circumstances, then he might feel ethically justified in secretly informing the police.
Years later, once freed from propaganda and aware that his previous convictions were built on lies, he realizes the regime was never what it claimed to be.
Now, he sees that sending someone to the gulag is itself immoral — and that the very act he once thought righteous was, in truth, the opposite.
In the first case, the believer could defend his action as a universal law — that anyone endangering others deserves punishment, for the sake of the greater good.
But once that belief collapses, the moral foundation reverses completely.
Rules and Reason in the Legal System
This illustrates the challenge: ethics depend on what someone believes at a given moment, making it nearly impossible to devise a universally sound moral rule.
Even “Thou shalt not kill” poses the same question — if one person’s existence truly prevents all others from living in harmony, would it not be more ethical to set aside the rule?
Here, the modern legal system shows its worth.
Only when a dispute is contested by two equals and judged by a third can the outcome be truly just.
If someone is condemned without such a process — and without the right to appeal or introduce new evidence — there is a great risk of error, even of condemning millions of innocents.
The Absence of Ethics in Today’s Order
This brings us to press freedom — something that, in the Netherlands, can no longer be taken for granted.
Media conglomerates and government dominance have made it harder for opposing voices to be heard.
When certain claims cannot be challenged, they become, by definition, unjust.
It’s not that journalists or editors act unjustly on purpose — the injustice lies in how the system functions.
Our collective decisions are shaped by the information we receive, and when that information isn’t fairly tested, bias and distortion creep into the very direction society takes.
Unchallenged opinions, accepted as truth without opposition or review, become legally unjust — and therefore ethically flawed.
In short: our news is unjust.
More precisely: anything that is not debated by equals and judged by an impartial observer is, at its core, unethical.
The Foundation of Ethical Media
This diagnosis also points to a solution: the creation of ethical information flows.
News that is fair — debated by both sides and reviewed by an independent authority.
The antidote to fake news, then, would be to train judges specialized in media, before whom opposing journalists must argue.
Their conclusions would be open to revision and only then could be used by lawmakers.
In this way, just news becomes possible — and with it, the potential for a genuinely ethical society, built on fair and verified information.
In short: that’s how ethical media can come into being.
