In this article, the author briefly highlights the problems and current challenges that are connected to ethics of the journalistic activity, specifically in the 21 st century.
Keywords: ethics, journalism, tenets, 21 st century.
It is quite understandable that any job or legal, at least within the governmental understanding of the word, activity has a set of standards that shape the way a product is made or an activity is conducted. It is quite imperative to keep true to such rules, or principles if you may, to adhere not only to rules but to the better side of the human nature as well. The same can be said about ethics.
According to Oxford Dictionary, ethics are moral principles that control or influence a person’s behavior. While the definition is quite straightforward, the implications of the existence of such rules is that morality should be playing a big role in how people behave and hold themselves. However, the ethics and their priority may vary from one profession to the other. Journalism is, in actuality, one of those professional fields, in which ethics not only is important but is pivotal to the idealistic concept of professional activity.
At its core — Journalism is creation and distributions of events, facts and other types of information that the public may encapsulate as news. As such, this would require a great deal of freedom of action to accomplish such an endeavor, which means that the limits of the journalistic grasp are quite lax. With that said, it is important to understand that those limitations are still installed by the government to protect its citizens from any malicious or unlawful actions. But those limitation are instilled by outside sources. The moral and ethical side of journalism is what keeps it honest to its true purpose. For us to understand the reason why the ethics are so important to journalistic activity, we must first dig deeper into what its core principles actually are. According to the International Federation of Journalists there is a multitude of principles and requirements for journalistic activity. Since ethical principles are mostly considered to be those that are regulating the factors outside of legal rights, they may seem somewhat obvious in their phrasing, for example:
– People have the right to receive truthful and verified information.
– The journalist's loyalty should be to objective reality.
– A journalist is socially responsible for their informational material.
– A journalist should be honest and objective.
– A journalist must respect other people’s dignity and right for privacy.
As can be seen from the examples, all of these tenets focus on pursuing the truth, standing by freedom and justice, all the while keeping the journalist’s credibility intact by staying neutral and unbiased. Such a task is quite difficult to perform and is one of the major challenges of journalism.
The main problem of the ethics, however, is keeping by them at all times. And as time passes, it becomes more and more difficult to preserve the journalistic purity. The ethical challenge is not something that can be taken slightly. It is a multifaceted problem that requires analysis from multiple angels and points of views. The reason for that, would be in the underlying nature of ethics, as a whole. Since ethics is a conceptual set of field-specific rules, not everyone feels they apply to them. The human nature is intrinsically connected to the challenges ethics face and often is, as it turns out, becomes the main offender in ethical dilemmas. Out of more commonly spoken about ethical problems it is perhaps most useful to highlight:
– Biased review of events;
– Misinformation and propaganda fed by various parties controlling the journalistic source for reasons of information warfare, individual profit of any kind, etc;
– Unlawful ways of extracting information for the piece of news;
– And last but not least is the restriction of other people’s freedom in order to get the required by the journalist material.
As already mentioned above, ethical dilemmas arise due to human nature first and foremost. With that in mind it is important to pay attention to what exactly pushes people to ignore the idealistic and pure nature of journalism. The answer to such a query was never easier to find. Such things as greed and simple laziness are so common in our world, however they become exceptionally malicious in the field of journalism. Be it for the sake of expanding their own influence or perhaps simply out of spite, a journalistic agency may publish a critical and negative review of a product or business, which may result in irreparable damage. Nevertheless, just as there are laws that protect a journalist’s integrity and freedom of speech, there are also laws that protect people and their endeavors from journalistic malpractice. However, it is impossible to truly fix something in such a case, as the public, while being the direct target audience for the journalism, is volatile and as a whole is prone to jump out of control.
There are heaps of stories of people ruined by journalistic maliciousness or simple mistakes. One such case is an especially grim one — the case of Gino Girolimoni or, as he is also known — the Monster of Rome. Gino was a simple photographer who got into a lot of trouble due to the wrongful accusation of being a child killer by the local police and journalistic organizations. Girolimoni was prematurely described in the news outlets as the killer, who was finally caught, all the while, the evidence was quite untrustworthy or even completely fabricated. After he was released, due to the discrepancies in evidence, his proof of innocence was of little interest to the news agencies looking for the next big story. He died of poverty with his reputation and integrity tarnished.
Another similar case tells us of a man, who is well known to the modern public — Johny Depp. Without going into the finer details of his cautionary tale, his story is of a high-profile case, in which he was accused of being “a wifebeater”, as said by the Sun, one of the bigger UK newspapers. Domestic abuse allegations came from his now-divorced wife Amber Heard and were discussed by the whole world. The media lost no time jumping the wagon with the coverage and premature lynching, propagating that Depp was indeed the monster he was portrayed. This resulted in Depp losing a considerable amount of money. In addition, due to his newfound infamy he was rejected by the filmmaking industry, losing out even on filming jobs that he had already started. After a considerable amount of time spent proving his innocence Depp started to recover, however there are some things that one can’t get back after such a downfall.
Most often than not, the public creates its own opinions based on the information presented in the media, however the public is not exclusive in its creation and use of bias. Another negative trait so often seen in modern journalistic articles, it is becoming ever more present due to the rise of citizen journalism and casual information sharing in social media that is passed as news among younger generations. Additionally, while it is understandably hard to be objective and impartial all the time, since that would require complete separation of personal beliefs and preferences from one’s own life, some may also inquire that staying impartial in an attempt to be more objective can limit the view of the actual events, showing the wrong story and, as a result, still breaking the ethics a journalist should keep by.
Laziness and greed, strive for more dramatic and eye-catching content, lack of objectivity and simple carelessness and disinterest in real-life consequences among the others already mentioned — these are all symptoms of an unethical journalist or agency. Professionals — have standards. The journalistic ethical dilemmas are borne from lack of compassion and love to the fellow human and it is especially seen in the 21 st century. In the digital age, humanity has learned quite a few new ways to distribute information, specifically through Internet platforms like social media and websites. With the new and improved outreach, the journalistic influence grows and so should the responsibility for the journalist’s actions. Nowadays the distrust of media and journalism specifically has never been higher. With the introduction of the digital information sources, the strive for better content has given its place up to dramatic, attention-grabbing style of texts and headlines since those collect online views much quicker. With that said, providing ethically content material is just not as profitable as the dramatic and most often overexaggerated news that sell much better.
The more pressing factors leading to such an outcome are closely connected to the age we live in than to anything else:
– The oversaturation of content desensitizes consumers, making them less interested in usual or more based content, making journalists compete for attention with wild stories and facts;
– The more — the merrier is a phrase that only works for parties. More and more journalism agencies are created every year, and with the increasing competition it is imperative to be ahead with the next big story that will shake the world;
– With the introduction of digital platforms and rising public distrust towards traditional mass media, people turn their attention to influencers and citizen journalists, who are becoming detrimental to traditional journalists;
– The new breakthroughs in technology make it exceedingly difficult for a journalist to provide authentic information. The opportunities to fabricate text and now, with the introduction of neural networks and AI software, audio and video materials it has become exceptionally hard to distinguish truth from lie;
– All of this is exacerbated by the time crunches and the number of deadlines. The more negative changes in work standards and\or regulations may push some journalists to more efficient ways of being on schedule, which albeit sacrifice the ethical purity of their work.
All in all, the ethical problem is, at the core, not something, that one must overcome, but — something that one must avoid. Being ethically responsible is time- and energy-consuming. Being true to yourself and to the people you enlighten, to find and check all the information used for the writing of an article piece, remain neutral and unbiased while highlighting events — all of this is hard work, and perhaps the most difficult part of the journalistic activity there is.
References:
- Core principles of journalism; https://www.ifj.org/who/rules-and-policy/global-charter-of-ethics-for-journalists
- Amend E., Kay L., Reilly R. C. Journalism on the spot: Ethical dilemmas when covering trauma and the implications for journalism education //Journal of Mass Media Ethics. — 2012. — Т. 27. — №. 4. — С. 235–247.
- Eberholst M. K., Hartley J. M., Olsen M. B. Between ideals and practice: Journalism students facing ethical dilemmas in online newsroom teaching—Lessons from Denmark //Journalism & mass communication educator. — 2016. — Т. 71. — №. 2. — С. 189–202.
- Izard R. S., Hesterman V. Ethical Dilemmas and Modern Journalists. — 1985.
- Проскурякова А. В. Международные принципы журналистской этики.
