Journalistic Code of Ethics - Are There Too Many?

By Lexi Murray
lm537616@ohio.edu

Many different organizations have a journalistic code of ethics. For example, in our readings, we saw a variety of codes of ethics from RTDNA, SPJ, NPPA, ASME, and PRSA just to name a few. However, with citizen journalism in social media taking off as a new form of PR and journalism, it is difficult for organizations to adhere to their rules. Now that citizen reporters are forever in the picture, it's very difficult to follow a certain code of ethics when they are not aware of journalistic ethics and other rules that keep the system working.

What a lot of citizen journalists may not know is that journalists and organizational platforms have published many codes of ethics for citizen reporters to adhere to since social media has become such a prominent part of today’s society. Academia has an “Ethics of Citizen Journalists Sites” PDF that is downloadable from the internet, the online platform "The Medium" has an article called “Code of Ethics For Citizen Journalists.” Many independent bloggers have written things too, for instance, Snurblog wrote “The Ethics of Citizen Journalism.” Many of these ethics focused pieces talk about the importance of reporting the truth of a situation and knowing what is going on before posting. For example, in "The Medium" article, the first outlined part of the code of ethics for citizen journalists provided is to “Report The Accurate Truth.” The other aspects focused on in this article are fairness, privacy, social media, independence and content moderation. These aspects have some similarities but are also somewhat different from the code of ethics outlined for organizations like SPJ, and PRSA. 

(SPJ image: Google Images)

(PRSA image: Google Images)

Although reporting honestly is at the forefront for all of the codes, PRSA also focuses on aspects such as expertise, loyalty, and advocacy. SPJ also focuses on aspects such as transparency and minimizing harm. Although some of these aspects are the same, I think it can become confusing for any journalist, professional, or citizen, to have so many rules to try and keep in mind. If there was one list of values and just one code of ethics universally, I think journalism would be able to stay uniform, consistent, and more reliable. 

There are still problems with false citizen reporting as well as inaccurate professional reporting. The journalism community needs to come together to create one general code of ethics for professionals and for citizens to adhere to in order to better inform the public and to give journalists the reputation they are always seeking - one that revolves around honesty, transparency, integrity, and diversity while continuously keeping public interest at the front of mind.