Ethical Issues in Online Journalism

Team Members
Jim Brown
John Garcia
Stephen Miller
Robin Palley

The following points derive from a discussion about what we ought to be doing in online journalism, recognizing that everyday business pressures are often challenges to these principles. Nevertheless, the principles are desirable goals for behavior.

General

• Ethical standards for online journalism are no different than traditional journalism.
  
• Data obtained through first amendment privilege (lower cost than offered to other businesses or individuals) should not be resold at a profit.
  
• Beware of novel attempts to influence content that are particular to the medium such as polling that may be influenced by activity on listservs or people who enter chat rooms with the intent to sell products.
  
• Standards for the intersection of content and commerce are still evolving but the credibility of content must not be compromised.
  
• Organizational structure should not impede the process of doing good journalism. News staff should report to news management.

Content

• A sponsor should never control content.
  
• There should be no influence of advertising on editorial content. Often, one person synthesizes information from site metrics and feedback from users. That person often makes decisions related to both business concerns and editorial content. Such persons must clearly understand the inherent conflict of interest. Their role is clearly analogous to that of a publisher.
  
• There should be textual and visual standards for differentiating content and advertisements.
  
• There should be an editorial review process of software applications used in the site.

Disclosure

• Disclosure of partnerships should be made before the click made to enter partnership content. Both visual and textual symbols for such disclosures should be used.
  
• When the online company derives income from sponsored links, the relationship should be disclosed.

Codes

• A translation of traditional codes of behavior to online language should be developed to help new online staff recognize traditional values. A beginning for the translation follows:
  
  
  
  • Rules for sponsor-produced sites should follow rules for advertorials in print. In general, when someone other than newsroom staff influenced or produced the contents, that relationship should be disclosed to the reader.
    
  • There should be an editorial review process on web animations and graphics. Likewise, print or broadcast graphics must have a relationship to story content.
    
  • There should be explicit visual cues for the “look and feel” of site content that is not produced by online reporters and editors. In print, these cues are often hairline rule setoffs or a change in font.
    
  • If online content is sponsor-produced, disclosure should be made before the click. In print, such content might be labeled “advertisement.”
  
  
• Codes of ethics, internal to the online company or external where applicable, should be published online. Readers, and staff, should be able to read the general principles on which your company conducts business and develops news.

Interaction with Readers

• Privacy is a high concern for the public. Online sites should be specific about how they will use registration information from their readers.
  
• Registration screen defaults should assume the viewer does NOT want services from advertisers or sponsors unless the reader explicitly requests such services.
  
• If the registration process produces an error that cycles back to a previous screen, those screens should not revert to their default states but should hold users’ previous entries for editing.