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I watch a lot of movies on journalists and I often find myself shouting on the screen: “They wouldn’t do that!”
It is at this moment that the journalist does something contrary to ethics as lying to a source to bring them to abandon information or to disturb a room or to steal a document or to work hand in hand with the police.
I remember shouted on the screen when I watched Paul Newman’s film “Absence of Malice”. In this document, actor Sally Fields plays an investigation journalist. In a game, a young woman told Fields that the character of Newman could not have done the thing he was accused because he helped him to abort at the time.
She told Fields this information on the condition that the journalist would not speak to anyone about abortion. But the journalist still published it without any feeling of remorse.
I’m not saying that this kind of thing never happens in real life. But they are violations of the ethics of journalism and despite all the derision that many people have for the profession of journalism, most of the renowned journalists respect a code of ethics.
The SpJ ethics code
In the United States, the one that most journalists follow is set by the Society of Professional Journalists. It is Ethics Code Understands many fleas but they are divided into four major principles:
1. Find the truth and signal it
2. Minimize the damage
3. Act independently
4. Be responsible and transparent
Basically, good journalists do not try to mislead and they care about the truth of what they report. They are worried about the ramifications of their history and do not want people to be injured by that which does not deserve to be injured.
They do not report stories because important or rich or frightening people want certain stories and do not hold on to reports because someone offers them money or advantages. And they say to their readers or listeners or viewers where and how they obtained the information they report.
The International Federation of Journalists has a World Ethics Charter for Journalists. Many press organizations also have their own codes. News Decoder A Two codes of ethics For his journalists. One is the young journalist’s code of ethics. He has three basic principles: 1. Start in truth, 2. respect the integrity of others and 3. Protect copyright
The other is the ethical directives for the use of AI on the decoder of news. He has four principles: transparency; precision and verification; Make human stories; precision and verification.
An ethical dilemma
Sometimes journalists find themselves in what we call ethical dilemmas. This occurs when joining part of the code – Look for the truth and report it – violates the other parts of the code – minimize damage. If you point out the story, people will injure themselves, but the story is too important not to tell.
Or maybe you should do something that is not quite fair to get information; Someone gave you information that you were not to have or you had to encroach or violate someone’s privacy or somehow breaking the law to get the information you need for a story.
An excellent example of an ethical dilemma is what was confronted Jeffrey Goldberg In March 2025. He was the head of the Atlantic magazine and found himself included in an online cat on signal with the US vice-president, defense secretary and other high-level national persons in the US government. They discussed an imminent attack on Yemen.
Goldberg initially pointed out none of this because he thought it should be false; How, a journalist, could he have ended up on top secret security issues? He reported it once he realized that it was real and after the attack. He even displayed parts of the cat.
What he reported involved information obviously classified. But the story that was so important that it had to be told was how speed and loose officials high-level officials of the United States were with information that was a secret for a reason. The publication of information to bad people could endanger American troops.
And by reporting the story, Goldberg told readers that there were parties that he was not going to report because it would be bad. He was obviously not supposed to have this information.
Look for the truth and report it
Now, all the information that Goldberg reported that he was obviously not supposed to have. But the SPJ code does not say that you must be respectful of the laws or respect authority or do what people tell you to do. As part of the responsibility section, it is said: “Explain the choices and the ethical processes to the public.”
In this way, he recognizes that sometimes the stories are so important – there are avoidable deaths, perhaps – that you have to do something that is not entirely suitable to point out.
However, when you have to take these inappropriate actions, you must be able and willing to take an account of publicly. You should explain to your reader what you did and why you did it, what Goldberg did.
In another excellent example of ethics, journalist Shane Bauer went under cover in 2016 Work as a goalkeeper in a private prison in the US state in Louisiana to learn more about an industry that held some 130,000 people in prison. But he did not lie to get the post even if he could not make the story without obtaining the post. And who would hire an investigative journalist for a job as a prison guard?
He had on his curriculum vitae his real name and his real professional history, who had used him by the publisher of Mother Jones, a Mouris magazine on the left. But the people who hired him for the post of prison guard never asked for this.
At that time, some of you shout on your screen that journalists violate it all the time. We live in a time of disinformation and money where people are constantly out of verified information and false information on programs entitled “News” and on podcasts, social media and on YouTube and Tiktok videos.
But those who do it are ridiculed by the large number of journalists who try to point out the truth ethically. And what makes these journalists crazy is to be put in the same camp as those who misunderstand and misinform.
It makes them want to shout.
Questions to consider:
1. What is a “code of ethics”?
2. What do we mean by an ethical dilemma?
3. Can you think at a time when it was difficult for you to tell the truth?
