Five Codes of Ethics I Recommend For Journalists

1- Ethics in the digital age

Although this set of ethics is not a formal code I find it a very important discussion about issues in digital journalism, the guidelines here tackles issues like linking, user generated content, anonymity of users and moderating forums.

The post also present ethical guidelines in the form of FAQ which is easier to for everyone understand.

2-What about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

What protocols do you have for checking the truthfulness of photographs or video that you find on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or photo-sharing sites? .. this question is one of several questions raised in the social media and blogging ethical guide for Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA).

The significant point about this guide is it contains some open ended questions to use it inside newsrooms .. very useful for editors who need to set a professional code of ethics for their oniline publications.

3- Regret The Error

If double checking the facts and making sure of information provided by the sources is part of the ethical code of journalism then this is will be a very useful copy editing checklist of 44 points should be taken in consideration to avoid publishing errors.

In addition to that checklist, Regret The Error is a very good blog to learn from other people’s mistakes, it tracks errors in media telling stories of every mistake, the blog is edited by Craig Silverman the columnist for Columbia Journalism Review and author of a book who have the same title “Regret the Error”.

4- Ethics of photoshop

If the internet and social media revolution created the famous rule “Everybody is a journalist”, Digital Cameras and photo editing programs made everybody a professional photographer, that is why I find this set of ethics by The National Press Photographers Foundation very useful to every young journalist.

The best part of this code is it gives examples of manipulation and wrong doing made by well established media organizations to avoid their previous mistakes.

5- Global ethics

Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute in Missouri school of journalism offers an extensive list of more than 400 code of ethics worldwide practiced by journalists from Albania to Zambia, you can navigate ethics by country.

This list is very useful to understand the common points and differences between countries from different regions around the world, in most cases codes of ethics are ideal and doesn’t reflect the situation of press freedom and availability of information in every country.