4 Codes of Ethics

It’s time for another hypothetical situation.

Study the following presentation slides by using the forward button or clicking on sections of the control bar.

THE FOUNDATION OF ETHICAL JOURNALISM

In this lesson, we’ll closely study the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.

In some professions, practitioners are required to pass extensive examinations or follow governmental regulations. For example, lawyers must pass a bar exam, and certified public accountants must pass exams and participate in continuing education programs.

U.S. journalists, however, are not required to pass exams to practice their profession. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. If state governments required journalists to pass an exam for a reporting license, it might lead to public officials revoking licenses of journalists who provide unfavorable but accurate coverage of governmental affairs. This would be a violation of the journalists’ First Amendment rights.

FOUR PILLARS

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics contains four key principles:

1. Seek Truth and Report It
2. Minimize Harm
3. Act Independently
4. Be Accountable and Transparent

Your most important task for this lesson is to study the explanations for each principle on the SPJ website:

• SPJ Code of Ethics

In the introduction, note that the code is intended to extend beyond newsroom journalists.

The Society declares these four principles as the foundation of ethical journalism and encourages their use in its practice by all people in all media.

REVISITING OBJECTIVITY vs. ADVOCACY

The tension between objectivity vs. activism resurfaces when we look at the SPJ Code of Ethics. In a 2020 article for Harvard’s Neiman Lab, Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis summarized a University of Wisconsin research study about trust in journalism, including this observation:

For traditionally oriented journalists, trust is achieved by transmitting facts and helping people perform their democratic duties, without any particular public participation involved in that process. Fixing the trust problem, in this view, means doubling down on objectivity, transparency, and accuracy — but in a way that helps citizens to more readily recognize the value that such things provide.

Notice the emphasis on two principles in the SPJ Code of Ethics: transparency and accuracy. Similarly, Poynter’s Barbara Allen, writing for an audience of journalism educators, suggests that journalists can’t have it both ways with objectivity and activism:

Protester or journalist. Pick one. You cannot flip a switch minute-to-minute. You can go and observe what is happening and then get into active reporter mode, but ethical considerations related to conflict of interest prevent you from actively engaging in the protest (even to chant or sing).

Allen’s view follows the SPJ principle that journalists should act independently.

In case you want to read more on your own, here are the links to two articles mentioned above:

• Journalism faces a crisis in trust. Journalists fall into two very different camps for how to fix it. – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

• As protests reach critical mass, how to really be there for your journalism students – Poynter

TRUTHFUL REPORTING vs. TRANSPARENCY

Undercover reporting provides another example when one SPJ principle can conflict with another, thus creating an ethical dilemma. In some instances, especially for investigative reporting, news journalists may feel stymied when they identify themselves as reporters. Sources may hide the truth or withhold information when they know they are speaking with a journalist. However, going undercover to better report the truth decreases transparency in the reporting process.

As an example, Shane Bauer used undercover reporting for a deep analysis of the private prison industry.

• My four months as a private prison guard – Mother Jones

His opening article includes the following rationale for undercover tactics:

I started applying for jobs in private prisons because I wanted to see the inner workings of an industry that holds 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 million prisoners. As a journalist, it’s nearly impossible to get an unconstrained look inside our penal system. When prisons do let reporters in, it’s usually for carefully managed tours and monitored interviews with inmates. Private prisons are especially secretive. Their records often aren’t subject to public access laws; CCA has fought to defeat legislation that would make private prisons subject to the same disclosure rules as their public counterparts. And even if I could get uncensored information from private prison inmates, how would I verify their claims? I keep coming back to this question: Is there any other way to see what really happens inside a private prison?

Bauer determined that the need for truthful reporting outweighed ethical concerns with deceiving prison workers and inmates about his true identity.

For a less-intense example of undercover reporting, view the following example from NBC2 News in Florida:

To summarize, undercover journalists may deceive others about their identity to collect more in-depth information. Journalists who utilize undercover reporting tactics prioritize truthful reporting over transparency to their sources, even if it means not being entirely truthful about their identity or motives during the reporting process.

SPONSORED CONTENT

The SPJ Code of Ethics can apply to all media professionals, including those working in advertising and public relations. Let’s look at one particularly thorny issue, sponsored content, as an example.

Sponsored content, which may be considered a form of native advertising, usually involves a company or organization providing promotional information to a news outlet. In some cases, a news organization’s writers develop sponsored content in conjunction with the external company or organization. Instead of being presented visually as an advertisement, the information in sponsored content looks similar to other non-advertising content published by the news outlet. In smaller text or graphics, the content is often identified as “sponsored content” or given a similar label.

You can read the following essay about ethical concerns with sponsored content and native advertising:

• New forms of advertising raise questions about journalism integrity – The Conversation

The essay argues that “native ads are potentially deceptive to consumers, in their content, their presentation and how they are shared on social media.”

The essay includes analysis of Washington Post content sponsored by cigarette-maker Philip Morris International. Read the example to gain a better of understanding of sponsored content:

• Lost amid misinformation: Real people, real science, real progress – The Washington Post (sponsored by Philip Morris International)

Critics of the this sponsored content from Philip Morris International argue that the article attempts to discredit research on vaping products and other smoke-free alternatives in order to benefit the company’s sales.

To go a step further, a research summary from Truth Initiative, an advocacy organization that promotes “lives free from smoking, vaping and nicotine,” suggests that the tobacco industry uses native advertising to “promote its new products as ‘safer alternatives’ to smoking despite inconclusive evidence.”

As another example, here’s 2021 sponsored content that appeared on the Inside Higher Ed website. Note that the content is actually “written and provided by Southeastern Conference,” but it looked much like a news story, especially through the use of sources and attributions.

• SEC uses athletics platform to celebrate, support conference member faculty

Inside Higher Ed compiles a directory of all sponsored content, which helps provide some transparency.

• Sponsored content – Inside Higher Ed.

Below is a print magazine example from Wired, using the label “branded content.” For emphasis and clarity in this illustration, the label for branded content is enlarged above the print page as it originally appeared in the magazine. Readers who do not see the label may assume that the content was written and edited by journalists from Wired.

Media professionals must be especially careful to follow the SPJ Code of Ethics when considering the use of sponsored content in their publications, broadcasts or social media accounts. Here are a few sample questions to guide the decision-making process:

Seek Truth and Report It – Can the publisher or outlet verify that the reporting is truthful? Is this just a means for a company or organization to create advertising that looks like news?

Minimize Harm – If the sponsored content encourages the purchase of a product or service, will it mislead consumers and potentially cause harm?

Act Independently – Is the sponsored content labeled appropriately so that it does not blur the lines between news and advertising?

Be Accountable and Transparent – Is there an agreed-upon process for correcting any factual errors in the content before and after publication? Is it clear and transparent to the audience that, much like an advertisement, a company or organization has purchased space or time for the sponsored content?

OPTIONAL DEEP DIVE

Here’s a comedic but concerning intersection of sponsored content, TV journalism and an undercover operation. Talk-show host John Oliver revealed how some local outlets do not properly acknowledge sponsored content on news-related shows. To accomplish this objective, Oliver’s team created a pseudo-product and bought actual interview slots on some local shows to promote the product. The news stations that hosted interviews for this product were not aware of the ruse.

Oliver’s team was making a point that many casual television viewers do not know the extent to which their local news and talk shows are filled with sponsored advertising.

(Warning — as a whole, the linked video below contains some edgy language and imagery. The video link below skips forward to an explanation of the undercover scheme).

• Sponsored Content: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – HBO (YouTube video)

CLOSING REVIEW