Ethics: A Code To Follow

Listed below is the Code of Ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation's leading organization of journalists. I strongly recommend you print out the code and keep it handy for however long you are a journalist. The principles offered within can help you guide an ethical and responsible response to numerous situations: 


SPJ Code of Ethics
Download a printable copy [PDF]

Preamble
 
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society's principles and standards of practice.

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The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced by thousands of journalists, regardless of place or platform, and is widely used in newsrooms and classrooms as a guide for ethical behavior. The code is intended not as a set of "rules" but as a resource for ethical decision-making. It is not — nor can it be under the First Amendment — legally enforceable.

For an expanded explanation, please follow this link.

Seek Truth and Report It
 
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Journalists should:

— Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
— Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.
— Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.
— Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information. Keep promises.
— Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
— Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.
— Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it.
— Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public. Use of such methods should be explained as part of the story
— Never plagiarize.
— Tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even when it is unpopular to do so.
— Examine their own cultural values and avoid imposing those values on others.
— Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.
— Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
— Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
— Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.
— Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
— Recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public's business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection.

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Minimize Harm 
 
Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.

Journalists should:

— Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
— Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
— Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
— Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
— Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

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Act Independently
 
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Journalists should:

—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
— Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news. 

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Be Accountable
 
Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

Journalists should:

— Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.
— Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.
— Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
— Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.
— Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

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The SPJ Code of Ethics is voluntarily embraced by thousands of writers, editors and other news professionals. The present version of the code was adopted by the 1996 SPJ National Convention, after months of study and debate among the Society's members.

Sigma Delta Chi's first Code of Ethics was borrowed from the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1926. In 1973, Sigma Delta Chi wrote its own code, which was revised in 1984, 1987 and 1996.

Media Law: A Quiz!

What I would like you to do is to answer the following questions in an email. Then, send the email to me no later than 9 a.m. Monday to omars@msu.edu, with the subject line of law quiz. This is a closed-book quiz; please take it after reading the ethics chapter and blog post, but DO NOT use those materials while actually taking the quiz. 

No, I can't make sure you're being honest. But journalists are only as good as their integrity. Ethics are what you do when no one is looking, right? So, don't cheat.

Here are your questions, to be answered in a true/false format:


1. The right of the press and public to attend judicial proceedings can never be abridged.

2. The federal government and all state governments have laws that open public meetings and records, but the laws contain many exemptions.

3. Under modern libel law, plaintiffs must prove the falsity of the defamatory statements.

4. Actual malice, which public figures who sue for libel must prove, means the reporter or publisher intended to harm the plaintiff.

5. Journalists have an absolute right of access to crime, accident or disaster scenes.

6. One way reporters protect themselves against libel suits is by identifying the people they write about as precisely as possible, using name, age and address.

7. The U.S. Supreme Court has approved the practice of allowing reporters to ride along with police on drug busts or other arrests.

8. News organizations always escape liability for defamatory statements if they prove they accurately quoted defamatory charges made by other people.

9. Information drawn from public records, such as property tax information or court documents, can never be the basis for a lawsuit over publicity to private facts.

10. The major common-law defenses to libel suits are truth, fair-report privilege and harmless error.

11. Such things as interviewing acquaintances and examining public records do not constitute intrusion on a person's privacy.

12. Defamatory statements are those that lower a person's reputation in the community or deter others from associating or doing business with that person.

13. A private individual who is a libel plaintiff must prove actual malice to win punitive damages.

14. The U.S. Supreme Court has said most people who become public figures for purposes of a libel suit do so involuntarily.

15. The plaintiff in a false light privacy lawsuit does not have to prove injury to reputation.

16. Statements of opinion may be protected from libel suits, so long as the statements are not based on or do not imply false facts about the plaintiff.

17. The U.S. Supreme Court has said reporters cannot be subpoenaed by courts or grand juries to testify about confidential sources and information. 

Ethics: A Quiz!

What I would like you to do is to answer the following questions in an email. Then, send the email to me no later than 9 a.m. Monday to omars@msu.edu, with the subject line of ethics quiz. This is a closed-book quiz; please take it after reading the ethics chapter and blog post, but DO NOT use those materials while actually taking the quiz. 

No, I can't make sure you're being honest. But journalists are only as good as their integrity. Ethics are what you do when no one is looking, right? So, don't cheat.

Here are your questions, to be answered in a true/false format:

1. Many reporter decisions have unintended and long-term consequences.

2. A question to ask when making an ethical decision is, "Does this decision fit the kind of journalism I believe in and the way people should treat one another?"

3.  Two important questions to ask when facing ethical decisions are "Who will be hurt, and how many?" and "Who will be helped, and how many?"

4. Deciding which side to present first in a story is a value judgment.

5. Managing editors encourage their journalists to become involved in city politics.

6. It is usually all right for reporters to interfere with police procedures.

7. News stories often are the sources of a second wound to victims.

8. The mirco issue is the main reason for publishing or airing a story.

9. Good journalists are also compassionate journalists.

10. It is ethical to lie about being a reporter when the result is a good story.

11. It is now acceptable to publish the names of all juvenile defenders.

12. Gossip is a good source for news topics.

13. Journalists must learn to recognize their biases.

14. Professional organizations can compel members to follow their ethics codes.

15. Being ethical means being able to distinguish between right and wrong.

Ethics: 9/11's Falling Man, The Buzzard And The Girl, The Burn Victim

There's a fine line between showing readers the brutal truth of a situation so that they understand the powerful truth of any story, and showing readers a truth so brutal that readers ignore the point you were trying to make and instead question your judgment.

I can think of no better example of this than the so-called "Falling Man" photo, taken by an Associated Press photographer during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and published by The New York Times the next day.

This remarkable article from Esquire Magazine in 2003 offers a summation of the complex and contradictory forces at play in deciding if running the image was the absolute right thing or the incredibly wrong thing to do.

If you were an editor on Sept. 11, what would you have done? And why?

Likewise, what would you do if you were a photographer covering an African famine and you came across a starving girl being stalked by a vulture? That was a real-world decision for one photog, and it may have led to his own unfortunate end.

Finally, what would you do if you were the photographer who took this award-winning pic of this badly-burned girl in the Vietnam War? 

Look carefully at each picture; read each link carefully and in its entirety; and then let's talk it out.

What I'd like you to do for each photo is to answer the following questions for each of the three photos and scenarios:

-- Do you agree with the course of action actually taken by the photojournalist? Why or why not? Cite ethical values we've discussed in the blog and read in the ethics chapter.

-- What you would have done and why if you were the photographer? Cite ethical values we've discussed in the blog and read in the ethics chapter.

Again, the photos and scenarios (for which all the links are above) are:

-- The 9/11 "Falling Man" pic

-- The starving girl/vulture pic

-- the Vietnam War girl pic 

Then email me your answers for each of the three photos and scenarios no later than 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 15 to omars@msu.edu, under the subject line of ethical decisions.

I want to hear what you think, and why. I'm not looking for simply your personal opinions; I'm looking for your professional opinions, based on what we've learned and what we believe in as journalists and as human beings.

JRN 200: Speaking Of Ethics ...

... we're having an ethical problem in this class as of late.

A huge part of journalistic ethics is avoiding the appearance of a conflict of interest; that is, not reporting on people and places to which we have a personal or professional connection or interest.

So, if we're dating a basketball player, we should never write about the basketball team. If our sister is on student government, then that topic is off-limits. If we're in an anti-coal group, we should never write about coal specifically or energy in general.

That's because it's hard to be convincingly objective if we have a stake in the outcome. Common sense dictates that we won't be as critical of our friends, relatives and associations as we would be outside ones. There are few things as destructive to credibility as inside connections like those.

On the first multimedia assignment, I allowed conflict-of-interest waivers ON THAT ASSIGNMENT ONLY so you could get your feet wet in new mediums. For all other assignments, I assumed you would understand traditional conflict of interest rules would apply.

That assumption of mine was wrong. Many people had clear conflicts of interest in the second multimedia assignment. More troubling, some people had clear conflicts of interest in their second out-of-class stories (which never had such a waiver!).

Not only is it a clear violation of journalistic ethics, it defeats efforts to teach you necessary skills, like identifying and locating sources (which is harder to do when you don't already know them) and getting them to talk (likewise) and learning about entirely new subjects while on deadline (which is the vast majority of journalism; we don't have the luxury of picking-and-choosing things to report on; we report on what is necessary at the moment.)

(For example, on 9/11 journalists didn't have the luxury of talking to their own friends and relatives or changing the story topic; they had to talk to friends and relatives of people who just died, and they had to stick to the topic of global terrorism having come to the U.S., whether or not to subject was previously familiar to them. And did I mention this was all on a immediate deadline?)   

So, let me be clear now: from here on out, no conflicts of interest allowed on any assignment. The penalty for having a conflict of interest will be the same as a fatal: an automatic 1.0. If you need help in determining whether something or someone is a conflict of interest, it's your responsibility to contact me before the assignment is due.

Out-Of-Class #3: Rewrites

You should be getting back your graded third out-of-class story soon. Your rewrite deadline will be no later than 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 30 to omars@msu.edu.

Out-of-Class #3: A Pretty Good Example

Seasonal Affective Disorder

As fall transitions to winter in Michigan, there are many abrupt changes. Suddenly, it gets dark at 5 o'clock, and the air has the familiar chill to it.

According to the Mayo Clinic, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that is related to changes in seasons.

“You have low mood all the time, kind of foggy thinking, and you might eat more at night time, which is a direct correlation to low serotonin,” Ann Arbor therapist Lisa Puceu said.

With college students already dealing with high levels of stress, as well as the major adjustments of being on your own, college students can sometimes realize for the first time that they suffer from SAD.

Jillian Beld, a sophomore at Grand Rapids Community College, has a father who suffers from bipolar disorder as well as SAD. When the seasons begin to change, it triggers many of his episodes.

“In the winter when it starts to get dark earlier is when I start to see him become depressed. The amount of sunlight really affects my dad. In the summer when the days are longer, he starts to get hypomanic,” Beld said.

Puceu said that in her experience, the seasonal changes can have a big effect on her patients.

“There’s a link between bipolar and major depression and how they respond to the seasons. Typically, we will see a pattern of people becoming worse in the winter,” Puceu said.

Beld said that on top of how SAD and bipolar affects her dad, it also brings negative consequences for her whole family.

“When he’s down, it’s like a black cloud is over the house. Seeing him depressed makes everyone around him a little depressed,” Beld said.

Beld’s father is a single dad of three children. Beld said that when her dad is struggling, much of the load from around the house falls onto her shoulders.  

“I do probably all of the work around the house, especially when he is depressed. I clean, do laundry, feed the pets and help get groceries. When he’s manic he will do what needs to get done, but has trouble finishing what he starts because his mind is running a mile a minute,” Beld said.

Kelle Sajdak is a counselor at the Michigan State University Counseling Center. Sajdak said that one of the best ways to deal with SAD is by taking care of yourself.

“In the counseling center, we put an emphasis on the importance of taking care of yourself. Make sure you’re eating healthy, getting enough sleep, taking time to do some stress relief, whether that’s in the form of short naps, exercise, or reading a book,” Sajdak said.

The symptoms of SAD are tiredness and loss of energy, an increased need for sleep, craving of carbohydrates, weight gain, a general disinterest in socializing, an overall sense of hopelessness, unhappiness, and irritability, Sajdak said.

Sajdak said that it is important to note that many college students are already feeling these symptoms due to the high demands of school. If you notice these symptoms tend to get worse when fall or winter comes around, you may be suffering from SAD.

            Sajdak said according to information that she found on Psychologytoday.com, SAD is estimated to affect 10 million Americans. Another 10 percent to 20 percent may have a mild form of SAD. SAD is more common in women than in men, and typically begins around age 20.

            Living in a northern state like Michigan can raise your chance of suffering from SAD significantly, Puceu said.

“Michigan is going to have high instances of it, California is not. In places like Michigan you’re going to have a lot more cases,” Puceu said.

            Puceu said that there are many different ways that you can deal with SAD. A number of different supplements have been proven to be effective, and even tanning booths can sometimes give you the boost that you need.

            “Tanning booths, I’m not a big proponent of those because they cause skin cancer, but if you’re in a desperate situation, you can go to a tanning booth and it will help quite a bit with SAD,” Puceu said.

           

            On top of an occasional tanning booth visit and taking supplements, Puceu emphasized the importance of getting outside as much as possible, especially in the winter.

            “Get as much sunlight as possible. Put on all of your winter clothes and just get outside when there is any kind of sun. You just want to get outside as much as possible,” Puceu said.

            Puceu said that SAD could affect pretty much every facet of your life if left untreated.

“In terms of how it affects the rest of your life, there is not an area that it doesn’t impact. It can impact your sex drive, it can impact your desire to socialize, your thinking can get messed up and foggy, your sleep can get messed up, eating patterns can change, it touches everything,” Puceu said.

Contact List

• Jillian Beld:
• Phone: (260) 415-4698
• Lisa Puceu:
• Phone: (734) 904-2122
• Kelle Sajdak:
• Phone: (517) 355-8270
• Email: sajdakke@msu.edu

ASSIGNMENT GRADE: (GRADE REDACTED)

INSTRUCTOR COMMENTS: GREAT JOB OF REPORTING AND STRUCTURING THE STORY. THE ONLY WEAKNESSES I WOULD NOTE IS GOING FOR THE BARE MINIMUM NUMBER OF SOURCES IS NOT ADVISABLE; I WOULD GO FOR MANY MORE AND THEN USE THE BEST, MOST REPRESENTATIVE ONES. STILL, VERY NICE WORK HERE.