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RADIO-TELEVISION
NEWS DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION CODE OF ETHICS
http://www.rtnda.org/ethics/coe.shtml
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Understand that any commitment other than
service to the public undermines trust and credibility.
- Recognize that service in the public interest
creates an obligation to reflect the diversity of the community and
guard against oversimplification of issues or events.
- Provide a full range of information to enable
the public to make enlightened decisions.
- Fight to ensure that the public's business
is conducted in public.
TRUTH: Professional electronic journalists
should pursue truth aggressively and present the news accurately, in context,
and as completely as possible.
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Continuously seek the truth.
- Resist distortions that obscure the importance
of events.
- Clearly disclose the origin of information
and label all material provided by outsiders.
Professional electronic journalists should not:
- Report anything known to be false.
- Manipulate images or sounds in any way that
is misleading.
- Plagiarize.
- Present images or sounds that are reenacted
without informing the public.
FAIRNESS: Professional electronic
journalists should present the news fairly and impartially, placing primary
value on significance and relevance.
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Treat all subjects of news coverage with
respect and dignity, showing particular compassion to victims of crime
or tragedy.
- Exercise special care when children are
involved in a story and give children greater privacy protection than
adults.
- Seek to understand the diversity of their
community and inform the public without bias or stereotype.
- Present a diversity of expressions, opinions,
and ideas in context.
- Present analytical reporting based on professional
perspective, not personal bias.
- Respect the right to a fair trial.
INTEGRITY: Professional electronic
journalists should present the news with integrity and decency, avoiding
real or perceived conflicts of interest, and respect the dignity and intelligence
of the audience as well as the subjects of news.
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Identify sources whenever possible. Confidential
sources should be used only when it is clearly in the public interest
to gather or convey important information or when a person providing
information might be harmed. Journalists should keep all commitments
to protect a confidential source.
- Clearly label opinion and commentary.
- Guard against extended coverage of events
or individuals that fails to significantly advance a story, place
the event in context, or add to the public knowledge.
- Refrain from contacting participants in
violent situations while the situation is in progress.
- Use technological tools with skill and thoughtfulness,
avoiding techniques that skew facts, distort reality, or sensationalize
events.
- Use surreptitious newsgathering techniques,
including hidden cameras or microphones, only if there is no other
way to obtain stories of significant public importance and only if
the technique is explained to the audience.
- Disseminate the private transmissions of
other news organizations only with permission.
Professional electronic journalists should not:
- Pay news sources who have a vested interest
in a story.
- Accept gifts, favors, or compensation from
those who might seek to influence coverage.
- Engage in activities that may compromise
their integrity or independence.
INDEPENDENCE: Professional electronic
journalists should defend the independence of all journalists from those
seeking influence or control over news content.
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Gather and report news without fear or favor,
and vigorously resist undue influence from any outside forces, including
advertisers, sources, story subjects, powerful individuals, and special
interest groups.
- Resist those who would seek to buy or politically
influence news content or who would seek to intimidate those who gather
and disseminate the news.
- Determine news content solely through editorial
judgment and not as the result of outside influence.
- Resist any self-interest or peer pressure
that might erode journalistic duty and service to the public.
- Recognize that sponsorship of the news will
not be used in any way to determine, restrict, or manipulate content.
- Refuse to allow the interests of ownership
or management to influence news judgment and content inappropriately.
- Defend the rights of the free press for
all journalists, recognizing that any professional or government licensing
of journalists is a violation of that freedom.
ACCOUNTABILITY: Professional electronic
journalists should recognize that they are accountable for their actions
to the public, the profession, and themselves.
Professional electronic journalists should:
- Actively encourage adherence to these standards
by all journalists and their employers.
- Respond to public concerns. Investigate
complaints and correct errors promptly and with as much prominence
as the original report.
- Explain journalistic processes to the public,
especially when practices spark questions or controversy.
- Recognize that professional electronic journalists
are duty-bound to conduct themselves ethically.
- Refrain from ordering or encouraging courses
of action that would force employees to commit an unethical act.
- Carefully listen to employees who raise
ethical objections and create environments in which such objections
and discussions are encouraged.
- Seek support for and provide opportunities
to train employees in ethical decision-making.
In meeting its responsibility to the profession of electronic journalism,
RTNDA has created this code to identify important issues, to serve as
a guide for its members, to facilitate self-scrutiny, and to shape future
debate.
Adopted at RTNDA2000 in Minneapolis September
14, 2000.
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