Journalism Ethics

Journalism ethics are the guiding principles that distinguish responsible journalists producing verified, truthful news coverage from the purveyors of disinformation, conspiracy theories and propaganda.

Students must learn that understanding and applying recognised journalistic ethical practices, and doing so transparently, is essential to producing coverage that the public can trust.

Teaching journalism ethics can be divided into two main areas – explaining the fundamentals that are universally recognised in codes of ethics around the world, and showing how they can be applied to specific areas of coverage that can be especially challenging.

The idea of ethics may seem abstract to student journalists, so the class should begin with a focus on the essentials. The teacher should provide examples from a range of codes of ethics to show that they all share the same core values.

This chapter takes as its starting point that it is essential to impress on students the importance of ethics in the production of trustworthy journalism. Respecting a code of ethics separates responsible journalism from the unverified and fake content that is circulated both online and offline. Teachers should also give guidance on the use of artificial intelligence tools and explain the ethical issues that they raise.