Are Ethics Codes Ethical?

Cait Williams

cw699619@ohio.edu

   Contrary to what many people may believe about the media, the code of ethics that many journalistic societies have are not written in stone. It surprised me this week to discover that many of these codes could not be enforced if they were being broken. Many ethics codes are a framework of what a journalist should follow in order to remain a trustworthy source. There are positive and negatives to this. As a journalist and a citizen it is comforting to know that the news you are receiving is not strictly governed down to the last letter. People are able to express their views and what they see happening. However, when every company can create their own form of ethics to abide by, it leaves the door open for a lot of different standards to be set. Unfortunately, no matter how good a journalist someone may be, no one piece of work will ever meet every societies standards to both truth and public interest. An article can be labeled liberal by one standard and conservative by another. 

Journalism Tactics

Truth and Public Interest

   While this week's readings explored several different ethics codes each one had their similarities, specifically regarding truth and pubic interest. Though truth and public interest are classified as two separate portions of most ethics codes, they bore a striking resemblance to each other. When truth was talked about, most of the codes said how the responsibility of any journalist was to ensure everything is as accurate as possible. The facts should get in the way of the story. Facts should upset the narrative by showing that nothing is one sided. Behavior by all parties involved should be unbiasedly reported. In addition to this, it is not only the information mentioned that needs to be accurate and truthful, but also that all information available needs to be considered. Journalists should not pick and choose what they would like to include. If information that is factual is available, it needs to be included in the story. In an article published by the American Press Institute they discussed what truth means for journalists. If an article is published about a situation that is recent or perhaps even unfolding, it is understood that that article will need to remain updated with facts in order to remain truthful. Truth is not one stagnant set topic in journalism. It is never black and white and it is always evolving. Ethics codes have to allow room for those two things to remain fluid. 

   Public interest was not quite as uniformly described across ethics codes like truth was. Public interest is difficult to define because it is based on personal interests of what a journalist or a society deem worthy of being shared with the public. An important distinction to keep in mind when thinking about public interest is thinking about what the public needs to know, not just what they might like to know. An article written by the Ethical Journalism Network suggests using two tests when checking to see if something is in the publics interest. The first test asks if the information about to be published will be an invasion of someone's privacy in any way. The second test asks what the impact of the published media will be. Who will is affect both positively and negatively?

Personal Thoughts

   Personally, I am not sure that having all of these separate codes is very helpful. While I do think most of the ethics codes used are very thorough, it feels like there are just too many out there. However, I am not advocating by any means that a code of ethics become uniform or written in stone. I think that when that happens we become dangerously close to sliding down a slope towards a society that does not have a free press. The type of journalism we have is crucial to upholding a healthy democracy. I believe many people genuinely want to follow ethical codes and for the most part do uphold them.