The Real Problem with our Ethics Codes

Brandon Goddard

bg468718@ohio.edu

Trust in media has begun to reach its lowest point. This is not anything surprising. With only “32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. That was in 2016. In the years to 2019 the American public’s trust has slowly continued to decline.

There is many reasons that have been brought up and argued for time and time again over the course of this consistent gain of distrust among Americans and the media. The national conversation has focused on accusations of a lack of fact checking, propaganda, and just straight out lies. The range of possible factors never stops growing, with ideas from individuals such as media becoming more liberal, Republicans moving even further right, or quality of journalism has declined due to a lack of regulation. And that last factor brings up an important question: Are our ethics codes such as the AAF and PRSA outdated or lacking more specific outlines?

The real answer is actually surprisingly clear: there is no absolute answer. But there are many factors that don’t receive as much credit as they should. This includes the rise of technology.

image source: https://gq-images.condecdn.net/image/BrZl42xKXXY/crop/1620/f/hot-letter_media-gq-15feb19_b.jpg

The problem isn’t the ethics. It’s that the codes aren’t being updated for new technology or new media. Anyone and everyone has the tools to create a website or make a social media account and become a reporter. There is no one teaching or showing them the codes of ethics. They are looking to reach the largest audience possible through their smaller means. The common ethics are things that are easily understood by most people. The rising presence of sources who can’t and don’t have to be credible for even a one-off story has led to an attention economy. People want clicks and attention, on an individual level and outlet level. The declining trust in media and rise in social media has led to unhealthy competition for reportings and news. News outlets have to compete for readship to survive not only with other official news outlets but also everything else online.

In fact, among all of the somewhat official outlets, the least trust are always internet-based outlets. They are all explicitly partisan sites without a non-internet legacy to capture people’s trust. The openness and ease of use of the internet is definitely a massive factor in the battle of keeping trust in news and reporting, but it’s definitely not the code of ethics we have come to rely on. It’s people not knowing of, wanting to, or deliberately going against them for the sake of their own side of the argument.