At a time when not only journalists reach large audiences with news and commentary, new ethical questions arise. In the paper, two opposing views are discussed critically: a) the traditional elitist view, that tends to be suspicious of UGC in participatory journalism on account of the lack of solid ethical guidelines and b) participatory ethics related to the ideal of “collective intelligence”. It is argued that both views are problematic, in their own ways. In search of an ethical framework that can appropriately be applied to participatory journalism, in a liquid modernity, and globalised media reach, the paper discusses Zygmunt Bauman’s and Roger Silverstone’s readings of Immanuel Levinas, and his notion of “I-forthe-Other”.