Ethics within Journalism

Ethics within Journalism

Ethics is described as a bunch of prescriptive rules, principles, values of character that inform. Ethics are vital to a journalist’s career because it allows a journalist to follow set rules at a professional standard.

Ethics govern behaviour on a theoretical level and a practical level, journalists should behave professionally while following the ethical codes and conducts. It can vary from a socio context, a historical and political context.

These are some situations in which ethics arise in Journalism: borrowing the work of others (copyright), heavily relying on secondary sources, assessing the news values of a story, confidentiality, privacy, stereotyping, image manipulation and privacy and celebrity stories. Journalists must be careful with copyright rules, if they publish something they must do the research beforehand to check if a story has already been done and that their sources are credible. They must also be aware of the privacy of people and or celebrities by making sure everything is confidential and not stereotyping.