Blog: Ethics for Journalists
- Emma Campbell
- Nov 9, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 29, 2022
Is today’s news media ethical?
It’s a question that seems to be on everyone’s mind. People debate back and forth in the public forum about fake news, media bias, and whether or not truth is able to be found in mainstream news sources anymore. According to a 2020 study by Pew Research (@pewresearch) on American opinions on ethics in journalism, positive public opinion seems to be shrinking in favor of skepticism and doubt. Even journalists seem to be experiencing some doubt in this area, according to the same study.
However, even with this confusion about the role of ethics in media, most
journalists still claim to value ethics and honesty in their reporting. According to a 1999 report, journalists across the board agree that the prioritizing ethics in terms of producing accurate and balanced reporting is key. Even more importantly, journalists don’t seem to think ethical reporting is impossible to achieve.
“There is overwhelming consensus among journalists and news media executives that it is possible to obtain a true, accurate and widely agreed upon account of an event,” said the report.
So if the public believes the news media should be ethical and journalists believe they should be ethical, where is this discord coming from?
Journalistic Codes of Ethics
Some of the confusion may be coming from inconsistent standards within the journalism industry about what ethical practices are. There is no singular code of ethics used across the board to set standards for journalistic integrity. Many ethical codes exist to guide journalists, but even though they have significant overlap they can still have major differences.
Let’s take, for example, the Society of Professional Journalists (@spj_tweets) Code of Ethics. It has four main tenets:
Seek truth and report it
Minimize harm
Act independently
Be accountable and transparent
Within each of these categories, the code has more specific guidelines about how to practically apply these principles in one’s journalistic practices.
On the other hand, some believe that codes of ethics need to be more nuanced considering the diversity of the media today. Thus, the Online News Association
(@ONA, @online_news) has a “Build Your Own Ethics Code” tool designed to help journalists create a tailor-made code of ethics that fits their unique needs. Using this tool, journalists address a series of 40 ethical issues to create their own code of ethics which can then be implemented in a newsroom or made public for their readers to see (or both!).
My Thoughts
As a relative newcomer to the journalism industry, I can see how it would be overwhelming to have the pressure from the public and from within the newsroom to have a code of ethics. It is important to have these standards and values set up before confusing situations arise, in order to have a clear standard to help guide one’s decisions.
“There is overwhelming consensus among journalists and news media executives that it is possible to obtain a true, accurate and widely agreed upon account of an event.”
In my opinion, the SPJ Code of Ethics seems to have a greater ethical standard in the sense that its ethics don’t change based on the situation. Though I recognize that nuanced situations occur, I think that this code allows journalists to accommodate for certain situations while still adhering to these values. I can see the benefit, however, of also creating an ethical code using ONA’s website to have even more specified guidelines. It gives me pause, though, that the “ethics” in that sense are left entirely up to each individual rather than acknowledging a moral standard across the board.
Ultimately, journalists are responsible for holding themselves to a code of ethics. It is my hope that journalists would see the great need for honesty and transparency in the news field and be motivated to hold to a higher standard of ethics because of it, but only time will tell.
Comments