Journalism Ethics in the Age of Social Media

 Ella Umbarger

eu594318@ohio.edu

    The SPJ Code of Ethics has four main principles: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. In recent years, journalists have struggled with earning the public's trust. The lack of trust makes following the Code of Ethics even all the more important. 

    How has following the code of ethics changed in the digital age? 

    There has been much discussion about the neutrality of new organizations, especially in social media. Some new organizations such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have strict social media policies for their employees. The policy restricts employees from expressing partisan opinions on their personal social media accounts. 

                                              Source: AJR Photo Illustration by Sarah Siguenza

    Employee's personal opinions can reflect on the new organizations they work for. A personal bias might make it look the whole organization has the same bias.  I believe that the social media policy is trying to combat the overgeneralization it could bring. 

    I understanding wanting to keep the keep of neutrality for the news organization. However, some of these new organizations already have a reputation for being biased. Matthew Ingram makes several great points about this topic in his article "Most probably feel that each outlet is biased in a variety of ways, and they probably didn't get that idea from a reporter's tweets." If an organization already has a reputation of being biased, why would an employee expressing their opinion change that. Another point made was can you be fully transparent in your reporting if you don't acknowledge your personal biases. 

    As a journalist, navigating social media while keeping in mind the Code of Ethics can be difficult. RTDNA has written a set of guidelines for social media and blogging as a journalist. "As a journalist you should uphold the same professional and ethical standards of fairness, accuracy, truthfulness, transparency, and independence when using social media as you on air and on all digital news platforms." 

    Social media is a tool that can allow journalist to communicate more deeply with the community they report to. Putting limits on that communication can hurt the relationship between the two. Mónica Guzmán said "The differentiator for other industries is they think of the community as a means to an end. But for journalism, the community should be an end."

    I believe the social media restriction can be harmful, but skewing the news to reflect your point of view can also be even more harmful to the public.