By Erin Massey Hiro

Earlier, we introduced the concept that journalism is made up of broccoli (hard news) and chocolate (features) news. Broccoli news is good for you to know. It will help you in some way. Call it “information nutrients.” Chocolate news is more fun to consume but not as beneficial to you as a reader. It is time to eat our vegetables with media ethics and, in the next chapter, media law. You can’t learn to write news stories until you know the rules that govern them.  

As a journalist, you have a megaphone that will blast out information to the masses. That voice comes with responsibilities. If you are wrong or provide information that is unethical or illegal, your audience will stop listening to you. Without an audience, you are not a journalist.

An open-source book titled “Ethics in Journalism and Strategic Media” by a professor at the University of Arkansas features an interview with Steven Holmes, a member of a New York Times team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for coverage of race relations. As he says in an audio recording, “We’re given particular rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, which means that we have the ability to do things that other people cannot do. But with that right comes responsibility, and one of the things that we have to make sure that we’re responsible for is to do things in a way that generates trust in what we do.”

Holmes points to a current environment where many readers distrust the news media. To fight that, we need to reinforce ethics to build back our reputation.

“This is really especially true these days when you got people saying that we’re dishonest, we’re fake news or biased,” Holmes says. “The main thing that we have to try and maintain is a level of trust with the public and the way we can do that, probably the only way we can do that, is living by a specific code of ethics.”

Ethics

Journalism ethics is the cornerstone of all news writing. News organizations across the U.S. have established ethical guidelines that they publicize and follow. Many use some version of the rules set by a national journalism organization called the Society of Professional Journalists.

According to its website, SPJ is “the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization, dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior.” It was founded in 1909 and promotes free journalism-related information to its 6,000 journalist members in professional development, ethics and advocacy.

Reuters, the world’s largest international news wire service, produced a similar ethics guide outlining the rules that a news writer should honor when working for the organization.

It begins by laying out what defines a Reuters journalist, writing that “what must unite us is honesty and integrity.”

Other media organizations have their own codes. ProPublica’s ethics page features a bolded message to all its writers: “When in doubt, ask.” The message continues: “It is an essential prerequisite for success in the news business that we tell the truth, and that our readers believe us to be telling them the truth. If we are not telling them the truth — or even if they, for any valid reason, believe that we are not — then ProPublica cannot succeed.”

Truth/Accuracy

As a journalist, you must strive for the truth in every paragraph, sentence and word. That is harder than it sounds. But news writers need to pledge an oath to find out the objective facts and triple check everything they write.

SPJ’s guidelines read: “Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.”

In other words, you cannot just “know” or remember that something is correct. You need to find a source (or two or three) that can verify every fact. A good reporter triple checks that they are right. As a former newspaper staff writer reporting on a power plant under construction in the city I covered, I once called an engineer three times during his daughter’s wedding because I was still unclear on the nuances of power generation. I had to make those calls to ensure that my article was accurate.

The truth behind how a power plant works is hard enough, but it gets even trickier when humans are involved. Think back to a fight you had with your sibling/partner/friend. Now imagine if a neutral reporter asked both of you why you were fighting. Would they get the same account? Probably not.

As a journalist, it is sometimes hard to tell what happened, as people tend to see a version they can live with. The way to continue to seek the truth and be accurate in such situations is to ask more people. Was there a person who witnessed this fight between you and your friend? They may offer a version that is closer to the truth. A good rule of journalism is that the more people you interview and the more research you conduct, the closer you get to circling the truth. You may never find the absolute truth in some situations, but you can approach it with diligent reporting.

Harm

The second area of journalism ethics is handled differently by different news organizations. SPJ calls it harm while Reuters includes parts of it under the category of integrity. Under the heading of “Minimize Harm,” SPJ writes, “Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.”

Reuters sums it up nicely on its website: “When covering people in the news, Reuters journalists:

• Treat victims with sensitivity
• Avoid needless pain and offense
• Seek clear, unambiguous accounts of the facts
• Avoid sensationalism and hype
• Are on alert for spin and other forms of media manipulation
• Are wary of assumptions and bias, including our own as journalists”

The website continues, “A Reuters journalist shows integrity, impartiality, persistence, accountability, and humility when covering people. When these principles are applied, we should be able to defend any story to ourselves, our sources, and our readers.”

But sometimes, while seeking the truth, you will harm your sources. You will have to decide where the balance lies. For example, when I was a cub reporter for a local newspaper, a city official’s husband was killed in his car by a train. When I dug into the story, the police report said the car was parked on the train track and that it was an apparent suicide.

When I called the city official to talk about her husband, she burst into tears and asked me not to include the suicide detail. She had told her children that the death was an accident, and she hoped that they never would know differently. In this case, the truth was that police believed it was a suicide, but printing that would harm both the official and her children. This is where ethics get tricky. What would you do?

I did what Reuters suggests and asked my editors. We sat in a room and discussed the issue with the journalism guidelines to help us. Some argued that we should include the suicide fact, as the death was a public one in which others could have been killed. Others thought that the harm to the family was greater than readers’ need to know why the husband was killed. My editor decided not to mention the suicide, but the other newspaper in the area did include it, so the truth got out anyway.

Act Independently/Independence

My husband covered the San Diego Padres baseball team for several years. He would sit in the stadium press box during the games. The Padres’ public relations officials always had cold soft drinks and a popcorn machine in the press box. They were free and available to the media throughout all home games. Great, right?

Wrong.

Taking anything free from a source is a conflict of interest, even something as inexpensive as popcorn or a single soda. Why? It’s the perception that you are on the side of the Padres. When my husband was reporting on the team, he was not their cheerleader. His job was to write objective stories about how the baseball team was doing as a neutral observer. If he is munching on free popcorn as he writes, he might — subconsciously or otherwise — show partiality to the team. This is just one of the ways that journalists need to be vigilant in their work.

SPJ’s guidelines insist that independence allows a reporter to report objectively. The guidelines maintain that “the highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.”

As a news writer, you must avoid all real and perceived conflicts of interest. The case of the Padres popcorn is a perceived conflict. It would not have affected his coverage, but it could appear to, and that matters as much. The real conflicts are a little easier to call.

Here are a few of the common conflicts that new journalists might face:

• If you are a member of the track team, you can’t cover the track team for your school’s news outlet.
• If your friend is a member of the track team but you are not, the same rule applies. Ethically, you should not interview your friend.
  • This guideline applies to any friend. I call it the Coffee Test: If you know someone well enough to grab a coffee with them, you shouldn’t interview them. The reason is that you can’t be objective when reporting on a friend.
• You shouldn’t interview family members for a news story. Good or bad, you can’t be objective about your relatives.
  • Note: Major news organizations are breaking this rule and interviewing friends. When they do this, their coverage suffers. Plus, it’s lazy.
• They might offer, but you shouldn’t let a source buy you a coffee/soda/snack during an interview.
• You shouldn’t let a source pay for a coffee after an interview, either. Even if the story has been published, the perceived conflict is still there.
• You must not pay a source for information.
• Your press pass does not allow you free entry to a concert, film or other event. Remember to pay your share for anything you do in the name of journalism.
• Avoid socializing with a source. It can be tempting as a means to build trust, but it can mislead your source into thinking you are their friend when your job is to report.
• Ethically, you must not date your source. Don’t ask them out and decline their invitations (this happens more than you would think).
• Don’t allow sources to read your story before it’s published. They might ask in the name of ensuring accuracy, but the act allows them to give suggestions that put the story’s objectivity in question.

Be Accountable and Transparent/Freedom From Bias

I love to watch films about journalism, but so many of them have ethical problems. One of the biggest violations occurs in movies where journalists go undercover to get a story. They pretend to be someone else and then write a gotcha story that uncovers wrongdoing. Big no-no. Ethics require that journalists be transparent and accountable to sources and readers. Surreptitiously recording someone and using what they tell you in a news story is not only unethical but illegal (we will get to the law stuff later).

You should always identify yourself as a journalist and tell people what you are doing. Do not trick them into an interview. It is best not to mislead them in any way. The same applies to readers. Be honest with them in your writing. Did a source not call you back? Explain in the story that you tried five times, but they did not respond. Or tell the reader that a door was slammed in your face while you were reporting on the story.

A crucial aspect of accountability comes when a reporter makes a mistake. Of course, the goal is not to make mistakes, but it happens. Ethics rules require that a reporter not ignore or hide the error. Instead, a correction should be written and published in the same spot where the story first ran.

Rules also dictate that covertly fixing the error online is unfair to the reader. Instead, fix the error online and include a note at the bottom of the story explaining that a correction has been added. It is best not to reiterate the error and perpetuate bad information, but to put forward the accurate information and apologize.

It is painful to publicly own your mistakes, but it’s necessary to adhere to journalism ethics. Admitting errors is as important as getting to the truth. It’s how we build back or maintain trust with our audience.

Other Ethics Tools

While the guiding rules of journalism ethics are thorough, journalists will run into gray areas. The textbook “Ethics in Journalism and Strategic Media” outlines four ethical theories that journalists can use in tricky ethical situations.

1. Rule-Based Thinking When one ethical rule, such as truth or compassion, overrides all other considerations. The author writes: “For many journalists, truth is more important than any other ethical value. In most instances, journalists and media professional journalists should be truthful in their work.”
2. Ends-Based Thinking: Weighing the ethics in conflict rather than following a single rule. For example, consider what action would lead to the best outcome for most people.
3. The Golden Rule: Do what you would want others to do if you were the one affected by the decision.
4. The Golden Mean: Aristotle’s golden mean seeks a balance between two extremes. In other words, find the middle ground.

Other Temptations: Cheating

News writing is hard, and deadlines can be unforgiving. The temptation to cheat is a big problem in journalism, whether the method is plagiarism or using artificial intelligence (AI).

First, a few definitions. Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own. AI programs that came out in the fall of 2022 can do the writing for users once they enter a prompt. Using AI is taking credit for work that is not your own. Plagiarism in journalism breaks the rules of transparency and accountability.

Beyond the ethical problems, if you plagiarize or cheat in your news writing, you will get caught eventually. Your work is public, and people will figure it out. Consider the former journalist Stephen Glass, who worked for The New Republic in the mid-1990s until the magazine realized that many of his published articles were fiction. His public humiliation was dramatized in a major motion picture, “Shattered Glass.” Glass was fired and never found work as a journalist again. According to Wikipedia, he went to law school and passed the bar exam but also couldn’t land a job as an attorney because of his past. Consider his story a warning.

Journalists have played around with AI and found it both helpful and problematic. The Knight Foundation, which was studying AI even before the tools were available, says it can be a wonderful resource for data collection and analysis in newsrooms.

But AI has its problems. According to an article about ChatGPT on the website News Literacy Matters, “(The) information comes primarily from the internet and social media. Remember — AI chatbots do not generate original ideas; they cannot think independently. Yes, they can summarize and regurgitate, and some argue they can even reason, but in no way can they replicate higher-order thinking skills, ethical decision-making, or human consciousness.”

A funny anecdote: While researching a book, I asked Palomar College librarians for help. They used ChatGPT to generate a list of potential resources for me. One of the books on the list did not exist.

AI tools can be helpful, but they will never think like a human reporter. For new journalists, using such tools could hinder their natural development. How can you become a good news writer if you never write? It is essential to do the writing yourself and resist the temptation to cheat.