Journalist Ethics
- Modern journalism's ideal is the fair, accurate, unbiased story. Because readers know the journalist is telling the whole truth, they know that what they are reading can be trusted. Advertising does not blend with editorial, and opinion is kept in the editorial section. Facts are checked, and stories are not made up. Behind each story is a paper trail of information that supports the reporter's claims. Most importantly, editors and reporters stand by their accuracy and fairness, ready to run corrections immediately if anything is wrong with a story.
- Journalists, like their readers, are human beings. In the late 20th century, there were a number of journalistic scandals, such as the completely fabricated reporting of Stephen Glass for The New Republic or Jayson Blair's made-up people and quotes for the New York Times. Even reporters who try to be fair and unbiased are often caught in the lens of their own prejudices.
- Journalistic ethics are designed to maximize integrity and minimize behaviors like plagiarism, falsification of information and blatant lying. However, in the end it falls to the journalist herself to adhere to a code of honor. A journalist who wants to tell the truth and who is thoroughly self-aware of her biases and limitations will generally do well. A good journalist questions everything she writes, asking whether it is accurate and fair, before going to press with it.
- There is always pressure on news agencies to blur the line separating advertising and news, as advertisers pay a large chunk of the bills and are happy to provide editorial content to news agencies looking to cut costs. This pressure has led not only to the occasional unethical practice of running advertising content as news, but also the odd merging of news and advertising in advertorials or special sections. Ideally, the consumer should always be able to discern the two; in practice, news agencies do not always make this simple.
- Photographs can lie. Journalist ethics demand that photos be unretouched and unstaged, and in general they are. However, recently a spate of "fauxtography" scandals, primarily generated in the Middle East, has marred the image of Western journalism. Fauxtographs are images that have been either staged or manipulated to reflect the "truth" a journalist or other person wants seen. Because several media organizations, including Reuters and the Associated Press, have been fooled by freelancers or "sources" providing these images, it is critical that journalists not only refrain from image manipulation but also consistently fact-check images they receive from others.
- With the rise of the new media, bloggers and citizen journalists are competing with regular journalists for the public's attention. Most are voluntarily adhering to traditional journalism ethics. New questions are arising, however, about the ethics of linking to websites, transparency and integrity. New media seems to be weeding itself out; "gatekeeper" sites are bringing the best online journalism to the top and ignoring the bad. How journalist ethics will be affected as blogging and electronic media grow in importance is unknown.