Ethical Journalism Newsletter: March 3, 2015

Ethical Journalism News And Debates

What makes self-regulation work

The Ethical Journalism Network has a checklist for effective implementation of self-regulation for the media. This checklist, according to Aidan White, the founding director of EJN, is the minimum conditions necessary for effective regulation of journalism based on the principles of independence and press freedom. He has drawn up a set of questions at three levels: the level of the individual journalist, the level of media enterprise and at the industry level. (via The Hindu)

The readers’ editor on… self-censorship and self-regulation

Journalism is a difficult job in modern Egypt and yet amid all the obstacles the Cairo press is striving to gain credibility through self-regulation. (via The Observer)

A ‘right to offend’ should be balanced by a ‘duty to mend’

A common defense of Charlie Hebdo’s barbed cartoons was “the right to offend.” Some commentators made the principle absolute, and then concluded the following: If news media did not republish offending material, their editors were moral cowards. Legally, this response has its heart in the right place. But, ethically, it comes up short in three places. (via Media Shift)

The Guardian view on Russian propaganda: The truth is out there

Like so much electronic chaff dropped out of the back of a Tupolev bomber to confuse an incoming heat-seeking missile, the idea that there are multiple interpretations of the truth has become the founding philosophy of state disinformation in Putin’s Russia, designed to confuse those who would seek out the truth with multiple expressions of distracting PR chaff. The tactic is to create as many competing narratives as possible. And, amid all the resultant hermeneutic chaos, to quietly slip away undetected. (via The Guardian)

Reports & Resources

The Trust Factor: An EJN review of journalism and self-regulation

Systems of self-regulation of media and journalism need radical rethinking if they are to survive the harsh economic and political realities of news media in the digital age. That’s the key conclusion of an international survey issued by the Ethical Journalism Network.

Continue …