Book excerpt: Focusing on one historic episode per chapter, Ethics for Public Communication is divided into three parts, each dedicated to one of the three major functions of the media within democratic societies: news, persuasion, and entertainment. Authors Clifford Christians, Mark Fackler, and John Ferré, three trusted scholars in the field, discuss media ethics from a communicative perspective, setting the book apart from other texts in the market that simply combine journalism with libertarian theory. Classic media ethics cases, like the publication of Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, are covered in tandem with such contemporary cases as the creation of Al-Jazeera English and the controversy surrounding Ice-T's protest song, "Cop Killer." FEATURES - A new "communitarian" approach to ethics that breaks from other texts in the discipline - A focus on classic and current cases that are culturally relevant today - A thorough and comprehensive grounding in the theory of media ethics - Longer and more universal case studies than those included in other texts, in order to provide more real-life, ethical dilemmas