►Law discusses what is legally required or forbidden. Ethics asks what is morally right to do or not do – which for journalists sometimes means not publishing information that would be legal to publish but could cause injury. For example:
- The Online News Association notes that there may be times when to withhold or limit naming people who are involved in newsworthy events – ranging from victims to accused mass killers seeking publicity.
- Journalists often withhold details of mass shooters and suicides to discourage copycats, Jon Marcus writes in Harvard’s Nieman Reports. Should that “strategic silence” be extended to extremist speech, misinformation, and propaganda, too?
Sources:
- https://ethics.journalists.org/topics/withholding-names-and-information/
- https://niemanreports.org/articles/when-you-see-me-on-the-news-youll-know-who-i-am/
►Jim Pumarlo, former editor of the Red Wing (Minn.) Republican Eagle, noted that coverage of tragedies can cause more harm in smaller communities than others. “Stories involving grief and victims,” he wrote, “go to the heart of one of the tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: Minimize harm.”
Source: https://www.spj.org/ethics-papers-grief.asp
►The Digital Media Law Project notes that accurate information can be used in a privacy lawsuit: “In most states, you can be sued for publishing private facts about another person, even if those facts are true.” There are some exceptions, though, as the link explains.
Source: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts
►Former SPJ Ethics Committee chairman Andrew Seaman wrote about a case in which a reporter posted a photograph of a police report to Twitter with a person’s address and telephone numbers. “As children learn, sharing is caring, but we should care about what we share,” he wrote.
Source: http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/ethics/2014/10/05/caring-about-sharing/