Key Documents: Section II. Codes of Ethics/Newsroom Policies and Standards - Introduction

Introduction

American media organizations have worn the mantle of public watchdog throughout the country's history. Journalists of every type are charged with the task of constantly scrutinizing those in power, political or otherwise, and the ways in which they wield influence. Inevitably the question arises about who is watching the watchdogs and what guidelines exist for the way their power gets used. Despite the voluminous amount of law enacted in this area over the years (as documented in the previous section), the journalism establishment has substantially policed its own day-to-day reporting via codes of ethics and newsroom policy statements.

A series of high-profile indiscretions dating from the late 1990s prompted a large number of new, more comprehensive ethical documents and the demand for regular updates in certain areas. Many of these scandals involved outrageous deceptions perpetrated by journalists with distinguished news organizations. Patricia Smith of The Boston Globe was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 when she confessed to placing four fictitious characters into her columns. Jayson Blair, a New York Times staff reporter in 2003, shook the credibility of the paper by inventing all or part of dozens of articles that made it through the editing process. And Los Angeles Times photographer Brian Walski was fired that same year for digitally meshing two different photos into one more desirable picture.

Although rarely using the term “deception,” most recent documents on ethics and standards concentrate in part on vetting the acceptability of journalism practices based on various levels of deception. Is it permissible for journalists to go undercover to deceive news subjects? Television reporters might argue that hidden cameras and microphones are required to get certain stories. News organizations must draw the line between honest, creative reporting practices and unacceptable misrepresentations in myriad circumstances during the daily pursuit of the news.

It should not be surprising that the basic tenets of just about all journalism documents begin with telling the truth. Journalists are universally instructed to value accuracy, fair play and transparency as well. The public must also know that journalists are free from undue influences. This demands a close watch on the conflicts in interest that may sway a reporter's perspective on a story.

Innovations in technology and news delivery methods have also played a key role in spurring new areas of journalism ethics. Bloggers and other “citizen journalists” have vastly expanded who gets to create news coverage and editorial opinion for public consumption. They have considerably sped up how quickly news gets disseminated too. As a result, news organizations have struggled to come up with guidelines that will nurture the independence of new wave journalists while trying to hold them to more careful, professional standards.

The representative entries for Section II were chosen based on the reputation of the organizations that created them, and the demands of the six major categories under consideration. Introductions in this section tend to cover multiple documents within a medium or reporting specialty. The goal is to first broach the changes and ethical challenges unique to each category. Then the introduction gives a sense of how each organization has addressed those concerns in its document.

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