resigned as
News Corporation owner following the
News International phone hacking scandal. One of the most controversial issues in modern reporting is
media bias, particularly with political issues, but also with regard to cultural and other issues. Another is the controversial issue of
checkbook journalism, which is the practice of news reporters paying sources for their information. In the U.S., it is generally considered unethical to pay sources for information, with most mainstream newspapers and news shows having a policy forbidding it. Meanwhile, tabloid newspapers and tabloid television shows, which rely more on
sensationalism, regularly engage in the practice. There are also some wider concerns as the media continues to change that the brevity of news reports and use of
soundbites has reduced fidelity to the truth, and may contribute to a lack of needed context for public understanding. From outside the profession, the rise of
news management contributes to the real possibility that
news media may be deliberately manipulated. Selective reporting (
spiking and
double standards) are very commonly alleged against newspapers.
Attempts to identify misinformation The Action Plan proposed by the EU authorities is meant to propose a guide for identifying misinformation. The project seeks to target misinformation and produce unbiased and professional informational postings.
Genres, ethics, and standards Advocacy journalists—a term of some debate even within the field of journalism—by definition tend to reject "
objectivity", while at the same time maintaining many other common standards and ethics.
Civic journalism adopts a modified approach to objectivity where instead of being uninvolved spectators, the press is active in facilitating and encouraging public debate and examining claims and issues critically. This does not necessarily imply advocacy of a specific political party or position.
Creative nonfiction and
literary journalism use the power of
language and literary devices more akin to
fiction to bring insight and depth into the often book-length treatment of the subjects about which they write. Such devices as
dialogue,
metaphor, digression and other such techniques offer the reader insights not usually found in standard news reportage. However, authors in this branch of journalism still maintain ethical criteria such as factual and historical accuracy as found in standard news reporting. They venture outside the boundaries of standard news reporting in offering richly detailed accounts. One widely regarded author in the
genre is
Joyce Carol Oates, as with her book on boxer
Mike Tyson. Cosmopolitan journalism represents the cosmopolitanism imperative that the primary ethical allegiance is to a borderless moral community of humankind is often misunderstood. Therefore, it is important to say what it implies and what it does not. The claim of humanity is not the cognition of a cold abstract principle. It is the 14 Global Journalism Ethics ability to perceive and value our common humanity in the situations of life. It is respect for mankind's rational and moral capacities wherever and however, they are manifest. It is in our concrete dealings with others that we recognize humanity's common aspirations, vulnerabilities, and capacities, as well as its potential for suffering. In a fragmented world, cosmopolitanism focuses on what is fundamental—a common aspiration to life, liberty, justice, and goodness.
Investigative journalism often takes an implicit point of view on a particular
public interest story by asking pointed questions and intensely probing certain questions. With outlets that otherwise strive for neutrality on political issues, the implied position in an investigative story is often uncontroversial—for example, that political corruption or abuse of children is wrong and perpetrators should be exposed and punished, that government money should be spent efficiently, or that the health of the public or workers or veterans should be protected. Advocacy journalists often use investigative journalism in support of a particular political position, or to expose facts that are only concerning to those with certain political opinions. Regardless of whether or not it is undertaken for a specific political faction, investigative journalism usually puts a strong emphasis on factual accuracy, because the point of an in-depth investigation of an issue is to expose facts that spur change. Not all investigations seek to expose facts about a particular problem. Some data-driven reporting provides a deep analysis and presents interesting results for the general edification of the audience, which might be interpreted in different ways or contain many facts across different potential problems. A factually-constrained investigation with an implied public-interest point of view may also find that the system under investigation is working well.
New Journalism and
Gonzo journalism reject some of the fundamental ethical practices and abandon the technical standards of journalistic
prose in order to write expressively and reach a particular audience or market segment. These favor a subjective perspective and emphasize immersive experiences over objective facts.
Tabloid journalists are often accused of sacrificing accuracy and the personal privacy of their subjects in order to boost sales. The 2011
News International phone hacking scandal is an example of this.
Supermarket tabloids are often focused on entertainment rather than news. Tabloid news often have "news" stories that are so outrageous that they are widely read for entertainment purposes, not for information. Some tabloids do purport to maintain common journalistic standards but may fall far short in practice. Others make no such claims. Some publications, such as
The Onion, deliberately engage in
satire but give the publication the design elements of a newspaper and it is not unheard of for other publications to offer the occasional, humorous articles appearing on
April Fool's Day.
Relationship with freedom of the press In countries without
freedom of the press, the above-described standards of journalism are less relevant for reporters than rules surrounding censorship and avoiding politically sensitive or taboo topics. Non-free media may be prohibited from criticising the national government, serve as a de facto distributor of
propaganda, and/or engage in
self-censorship. Various other forms of
censorship may restrict reporting on issues the government deems sensitive. Similarly, media outlets reliant on corporate sponsorship,
sponsored content, or corporate owners may prioritise the financial interests or political viewpoints of their owners, advertisers, or sponsors and self-censor information that contradicts those viewpoints. In states with strong
defamation laws, the risk of lawsuit may also have a
chilling effect on journalists. By interfering with the aforementioned obligations of journalistic ethics, these factors illustrate the extent to which ethics in journalism are shaped by the law surrounding journalism. Freedom of the press is expressly protected by
section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and section 16 of the
South African Bill of Rights, and is protected as part of freedom of expression under
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In Canada, freedom of the press and other Charter rights are subject to
section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which provides that rights are subject to such restrictions as can demonstrably be justified in a free and democratic society, from which courts have developed the
Oakes test. The South African Bill of Rights, and the constitutions of countries like Kenya which were inspired by the post-Apartheid constitution of South Africa, provide for rights to be limited in a similar manner to the Oakes test, as codified in section 36 of the South African Bill of Rights. In South Africa and the signatories to the ECHR, freedom of the press is also subject to specific enumerated limits prohibiting hate speech, propaganda for war, and defamation. In the United States, freedom of the press is protected under the
First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Under the First Amendment, the government is not allowed to censor the press. Unlike modern bills of rights like the Canadian Charter or the South African Bill of Rights, the rights enumerated in the US Constitution are written so as to be absolute.
Variations, violations, and controversies There are a number of finer points of journalistic procedure that foster disagreements in principle and variation in practice among "mainstream" journalists in the free press. Laws concerning libel and slander vary from country to country, and local journalistic standards may be tailored to fit. For example, the United Kingdom has a broader definition of libel than the United States. Accuracy is important as a core value and to maintain credibility, but especially in broadcast media, audience share often gravitates toward outlets that are reporting new information first. Different organizations may balance speed and accuracy in different ways.
The New York Times, for instance, tends to print longer, more detailed, less speculative, and more thoroughly verified pieces a day or two later than many other newspapers. 24-hour television news networks tend to place much more emphasis on getting the "scoop". Here, viewers may switch channels at a moment's notice; with fierce competition for ratings and a large amount of airtime to fill, fresh material is very valuable. Because of the fast turn-around, reporters for these networks may be under considerable time pressure, which reduces their ability to verify information. Laws with regard to personal
privacy, official secrets, and media disclosure of names and facts from
criminal cases and civil
lawsuits differ widely, and journalistic standards may vary accordingly. Different organizations may have different answers to questions about when it is journalistically acceptable to skirt, circumvent, or even break these regulations. Another example of differences surrounding harm reduction is the reporting of preliminary election results. In the United States, some news organizations feel that it is harmful to the democratic process to report exit poll results or preliminary returns while voting is still open. Such reports may influence people who vote later in the day, or who are in western time zones, in their decisions about how and whether or not to vote. There is also some concern that such preliminary results are often inaccurate and may be misleading to the public. Other outlets feel that this information is a vital part of the transparency of the election process, and see no harm (if not considerable benefit) in reporting it. Objectivity as a journalistic standard varies to some degree depending on the industry and country. For example, the government-funded
BBC in the United Kingdom places a strong emphasis on political neutrality, but British newspapers more often tend to adopt political affiliations or leanings in both coverage and audience, sometimes explicitly. In the United States, major newspapers usually explicitly claim objectivity as their goal in news coverage, though most have separate editorial boards that endorse specific candidates and publish opinions on specific issues. Adherence to a claimed standard of objectivity is a constant subject of debate. For example, mainstream national
cable news channels in the United States claim political objectivity but to various degrees, Fox News has been
accused of conservative bias and MSNBC
accused of liberal bias. The degree to which these leanings influence cherry-picking of facts, factual accuracy, the predominance of non-news opinion and commentators, audience opinion of the issues and candidates covered, visual composition, tone and vocabulary of stories is hotly debated.
News value is generally used to select stories for print, broadcast, blogs, and web portals, including those that focus on a specific topic. To a large degree, news value depends on the target audience. For example, a minor story in the United States is more likely to appear on
CNN than a minor story in the Middle East which might be more likely to appear on
Al Jazeera simply due to the geographic distribution of the channels' respective audiences. It is a matter of debate whether this means that either network is less than objective, and that controversy is even more complicated when considering coverage of political stories for different audiences that have different political demographics (as with Fox News vs. MSNBC). Some
digital media platforms can use criteria to choose stories which are different from traditional news values. For example, while the
Google News portal essentially chooses stories based on news value (though indirectly, through the choices of large numbers of independent outlets), users can set
Google Alerts on specific terms which define personal subjective interests.
Search engines, news aggregators, and
social network feeds sometimes change the presentation of content depending on the consumer's expressed or inferred preferences or leanings. This has both been cheered as bypassing traditional "gatekeepers" and whatever biases they may have in favor of audience-centric selection criteria, but criticized as creating a dangerous
filter bubble which intentionally or unintentionally hides dissenting opinions and other content which might be important for the audience to see in order to avoid exposure bias and
groupthink.
Taste, decency, and acceptability Audiences have different reactions to depictions of violence, nudity, coarse language, or to people in any other situation that is unacceptable to or stigmatized by the local culture or laws (such as the consumption of
alcohol,
homosexuality,
illegal drug use,
scatological images, etc.). Even with similar audiences, different organizations and even individual reporters have different standards and practices. These decisions often revolve around what facts are necessary for the audience to know. When certain distasteful or shocking material is considered important to the story, there are a variety of common methods for mitigating negative audience reaction. Advance warning of explicit or disturbing material may allow listeners or readers to avoid content they would rather not be exposed to. Offensive words may be partially obscured or bleeped. Potentially offensive images may be blurred or narrowly cropped. Descriptions may be substituted for pictures; graphic detail might be omitted. Disturbing content might be moved from a cover to an inside page, or from daytime to late evening when children are less likely to be watching. There is often considerable controversy over these techniques, especially concern that obscuring or not reporting certain facts or details is
self-censorship, which compromises objectivity and fidelity to the truth, and does not serve the
public interest. For example, images and graphic descriptions of war are often violent, bloody, shocking and profoundly tragic. This makes certain content disturbing to some audience members, but it is precisely these aspects of war that some consider to be the most important to convey. Some argue that "sanitizing" the depiction of war influences public opinion about the merits of continuing to fight, and about the policies or circumstances that precipitated the conflict. The amount of explicit violence and mutilation depicted in war coverage varies considerably from time to time, from organization to organization, and from country to country. Reporters have also been accused of indecency in the process of collecting news, namely that they are overly intrusive in the name of journalistic insensitivity.
War correspondent Edward Behr recounts the story of a reporter during the
Congo Crisis who walked into a crowd of
Belgian evacuees and shouted, "Anyone here been raped and speaks English?"
Campaigning in the media Many print publications take advantage of their wide readership and print persuasive pieces in the form of unsigned
editorials that represent the official position of the organization. Despite the ostensible separation between editorial writing and news gathering, this practice may cause some people to doubt the political objectivity of the publication's news reporting. (Though usually unsigned editorials are accompanied by a diversity of signed opinions from other perspectives.) Other publications and many broadcast media only publish opinion pieces that are attributed to a particular individual (who may be an in-house analyst) or to an outside entity. One particularly controversial question is whether media organizations should endorse political candidates for office. Political endorsements create more opportunities to construe favoritism in reporting, and can create a perceived conflict of interest.
Investigative methods Investigative journalism is largely an information-gathering exercise, looking for facts that are not easy to obtain by simple requests and searches, or are actively being concealed, suppressed or distorted. Where investigative work involves
undercover journalism or use of
whistleblowers, and even more if it resorts to covert methods more typical of
private detectives or even spying, it brings a large extra burden on ethical standards. Anonymous sources are double-edged—they often provide especially newsworthy information, such as classified or confidential information about current events, information about a previously unreported scandal, or the perspective of a particular group that may fear retribution for expressing certain opinions in the press. The downside is that the condition of
anonymity may make it difficult or impossible for the reporter to verify the source's statements. Sometimes
news sources hide their identities from the public because their statements would otherwise quickly be discredited. Thus, statements attributed to anonymous sources may carry more weight with the public than they might if they were attributed. The
Washington press has been criticized in recent years for excessive use of anonymous sources, in particular to report information that is later revealed to be unreliable. The use of anonymous sources increased markedly in the period before the
2003 invasion of Iraq.
Examples of ethical dilemmas One of the primary functions of journalism ethics is to aid journalists in dealing with many
ethical dilemmas they may encounter. From highly sensitive issues of
national security to everyday questions such as accepting a dinner from a source, putting a bumper sticker on one's car, publishing a personal opinion
blog, a journalist must make decisions taking into account things such as the public's right to know, potential threats, reprisals and intimidations of all kinds, personal integrity, conflicts between editors, reporters and publishers or management, and many other such conundra. The following are illustrations of some of those. • The
Pentagon Papers dealt with extremely difficult ethical dilemmas faced by journalists. Despite government intervention,
The Washington Post, joined by
The New York Times, felt the public interest was more compelling and both published reports. The cases went to the Supreme Court where they were merged and are known as
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713. • The Ethics AdviceLine for Journalists, a joint venture, public service project of Chicago Headline Club Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and
Loyola University Chicago's Center for Ethics and Social Justice, provides some examples of typical ethical dilemmas reported to their ethical dilemma hotline and are typical of the kinds of questions faced by many professional journalists, including the following: • Is it ethical to make an appointment to interview an arsonist sought by police, without informing police in advance of the interview? • Is lack of proper attribution plagiarism? • Should a reporter write a story about a local priest who confessed to a sex crime if it will cost the newspaper readers and advertisers who are sympathetic to the priest? • Is it ethical for a reporter to write a news piece on the same topic after writing an opinion piece in the same paper? • Under what circumstances do you identify a person who was arrested as a relative of a public figure, such as a local sports star? • Freelance journalists and photographers accept cash to write about, or take photos of, events with the promise of attempting to get their work on the AP or other news outlets, from which they also will be paid. Is that ethical? • Can a journalist reveal a source of information after guaranteeing confidentiality if the source proves to be unreliable? == Artificial intelligence and social media use in journalism ==