►This section of SPJ’s code amplifies the “provide context” reminder that also is in the “Seek Truth and Report” part of the code. . On SPJ’s Ethics Central discussion of the Code, Trusting News’ Lynn Walsh offers ways to practically apply this section: “Include explanations about where images and video came from. This includes explaining if they originated from a source outside the newsroom, if they were edited, or if something was dramatized or from the past. Make sure those explanations can be easily found wherever the images or video are shared.”
Source: https://ethicscentral.org/ethicscode/
►The National Press Photographers Association’s code of ethics describes the steps that visual journalists should follow to produce ethical work. The code says images can “cause great harm if they are callously intrusive or are manipulated.” The Canadian Journalism Foundation also has a code of ethics based on SPJ’s Code.
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►While this section of the Code is generally focused on visual journalism, some see its opening phrase to “Never deliberately distort facts or context …” as a call to consider questions about “false equivalency” in news coverage. Marcia Apperson of PBS’ practices and standards team described the term as “making it appear that both sides of an argument have equal merit when one side relies on factual evidence and the other does not.”
False equivalencies do not provide an ethical balance required in news stories. As the PBS Editorial Standards & Practices guide says: “Fairness does not require that equal time be given to conflicting opinions or viewpoints.”
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- https://www.pbs.org/standards/blogs/standards-articles/avoiding-false-equivalence/
- https://www.pbs.org/about/producing-pbs/editorial-standards.pdf
►Scholars such as George Gerbner have documented how journalism’s emphasis on violence, conflict and crime fosters fear and distorted views about the world. Avoiding the distortion of facts depends on accurate and in-context depictions of violence, conflict and crime.
The University of Wisconsin’s Center for Journalism Ethics offers tips to add balance in crime reporting.
“Fear-based news stories prey on the anxieties we all have and then hold us hostage,” psychologist Deborah Serani wrote in Psychology Today. It offers guidance for consumers of news on how to deal with fear-based reporting, and to reporters on why they need to go beyond this attention-grabbing technique.
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