Cultural entrepreneur John Seel once defined culture in the following way: 

“Culture is the governing ideas and images that shape a society’s understanding of reality. It finds its expression in our personal aspirations about what constitutes the good life as well as in the stories we tell about it. It forms the invisible matrix of meaning that frames our thinking, guides our actions, and informs what we make. We make culture, but more importantly, culture makes us.”

 

Of the myriad institutions that constitute civil society, few, if any, are as influential as the media. Comprised of multiple industries ranging from news reporting to marketing to film and TV, the media consists typically of for-profit businesses whose products shape--or perhaps, are--culture. Given the uniquely powerful role of the media, what are its specific duties to the common good? What unique business challenges do media organizations face? How real is the tension between “doing good” and “doing well”? In this dialogue with Mark Joseph, a multimedia producer and the CEO of MJM Entertainment, we focused the above questions on the film industry, with an eye to elucidating the unique purpose and obligations of a media business.

 

This event was sponsored by the Zephyr Institute’s Center for the Study of the Professions and Moral Purpose.