Monthly Archive:: December 2013
11 Dec 2013
Journalism ethics: Why we are responsible for the mud-slinging in our comments
If journalists have an ethical duty to protect those who provide content, what does that mean in practical terms? I’ve seen much discussion of a duty of care regarding journalists who, as part of their job, take physical risks or cover events that leave psychological trauma. At the higher levels of journalism, where foreign correspondents
07 Dec 2013
Journalism ethics: How a hierarchical code would apply to a real-life decision
Jimmy Olsen rushes into the newsroom waving a CD-ROM. “Got it,” he says, almost out of breath. Lois Lane snatches the disk and slides it into the side of her MacBook, firing up its Audacity sound-editing program. She opens the first file on the CD. After a second or two of quiet static, a woman’s
04 Dec 2013
Journalism ethics: Duties to our audience, our subjects, and ourselves
When one of my reporters was leaving to become a manager at another paper, I gave him this advice: Make the readers your first priority, your staff second, and everything else a distant third. Putting aside the clues that may offer to why I’m no longer a working journalist, the key thing is that I
03 Dec 2013
Journalism ethics: 5 levels that bring broad principles down to real-life decisions
Over my years in newspapers, I went to many mandatory in-house seminars on copyright and libel issues. Had to attend annual sessions on how to evacuate our building in case of fire, and participate in fire drills. Number of in-house formal discussions of ethics: Two. Not mandatory. And those were discussions I chaired. I know