By Kevin Z. Smith

With news advancing every day that the White House is considering releasing photos showing Osama bin Laden’s body, journalists will soon be pondering ethical standards and asking themselves if they want or need to use the graphic images.

[UPDATE: 5/4/2011 1:49 p.m. ET - CNN reports that President Obama has decided against releasing the photos: http://bit.ly/lSDLGg]

(What do you think? How will your newsroom decide? If you aren’t a newsroom manager, will you try to persuade the “higher ups” a certain way? Comment below.)

It’s a debate that’s sure to take place in hundreds of newsrooms around the nation. It’s also a debate that will involve more than journalists and newsrooms, as thousands of bloggers will be eager to be a part of sharing of these images.

For more than 16 years, the Society of Professional Journalists, through its four editions of ethics books, has addressed the rationale for conducting open, thoughtful and deliberate discussions whenever graphic images are under consideration. Such discussions are necessary in order to provide the public with a reasonable explanation about how and why the outlet chose to use or not use the images.

To quote Chapter 10 from SPJ’s latest ethics book – “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media” – “Photo and video images tend to generate the most heated debates within newsrooms. And it’s clear that the ire of the public can easily be provoked by a single photo or a short piece of video.”

What will undoubtedly make its way into conversations is the use of the photos online. There was a time when traditional news outlets could make such ethical decisions within a “professional vacuum,” meaning that there was little chance that the images would ever been seen by the public cooperation of the news media.

That hasn’t been the case for almost a generation of information consumers. What the community newspaper may withhold could be circulated one thousand times within that same community via blogs and social media.

In addition to the questions below, news outlets will need to decide if they want to be forced into making their ethical decisions based on decisions by non-journalists.  If the photos go viral on the Internet – and nothing suggests that this won’t be the case – will there be pressure to succumb even if it might violate existing standards in the news organization (and nearly every news outlet has some policy about graphic images)?

To those who read SPJ’s Code of Ethics and point out that it identifies an ethical journalist’s first obligation is to “seek truth and report it” (and therefore using these images meets that sacred public trust of unvarnished truth), I also refer you to the next section of the Code headlined “minimize harm.” This section suggests that truth can be told with moral consideration to those who are involved or are subjected to the harmful effects of reporting. If we didn’t believe this, we’d be compelled to run news pages and newscasts filled solely with images of dead soldiers, crime victims and those who meet tragic consequences.

Whatever the decision, it should be based on solid principles, values and rationale. To say, “We’re doing it because everyone else is,” isn’t, and hasn’t been, an excuse for circumventing ethics.

Prior to publication or broadcast, the following questions need to be asked:

1. Do I need more information about facts or context?
2. Can I verify that photo or images are accurate and the source/s reliable?
3. What is the news value of the image?
4. What is the motivation for publishing the photo or broadcasting the video image?
5. What are the ethical and legal concerns?
6. Who will be offended? Does the offense outweigh the value of presenting the image?
7. What are the possible consequences of using the photo or the image? The consequences of not using it?
8. How would I react if I saw the photo?
9. Can alternative ways to present the information minimize the harm while still telling the story in a clear way.
10. Will the ends justify our actions
11. Is there a potential of establishing a new set of ethical standards by using or not using this image? Do I want that  to happen? Will I adhere to those new guidelines and make them a part of future discussions?
12. Can I justify my decision?

For additional perspective, see posts on this topic from Ryan Murphy at RTDNA and Al Tompkins at Poynter.

Kevin Z. Smith is chairman of the SPJ Ethics Committee and past national president (2009-10)

This column in Broadcasting & Cable is right on about Fox News. Fox sells, and that’s the big ethical problem news media face today – making money. Fox can sell its soul and rake in the bucks from the conservative public, MSNBC seems to be doing the opposite on the left, and CNN is somewhere in the middle. It’s not news, but the viewing public does not know that it’s not news. The cable news channels have gone to shouting heads, tweets, Facebook, etc., and constant injection of opinion. It’s entertainment and not news.

What’s needed is massive public education, which is not going to happen anytime soon. The pressure is on news media, and it’s all about money.

Somehow, SPJ, ASNE, APME, RTDNA, etc., must rise above the dollars and educate the public that real news has standards and is necessary to an effective democracy.

The changes we are seeing today in information distribution are similar in nature, if not format, to the changes seen in the advance of the penny press in the early 19th century. The printing press enabled mass distribution of information and hucksters, fakes, and politicians took advantage of it. Anyone with access to paper, ink, and a press could publish just about anything. Today, anyone with access to a computer – a much larger base – can publish just about anything. It took decades and organizations such as SPJ to bring sanity to news reporting.

We are in a period of change, and we will be for decades. We can’t throw up our hands, saying we’re better than they are. We have to educate the public and show that we are. And right now, the public does not have a very high opinion of news media. What are needed are a news media coalition and a grassroots campaign. Excuse the expression, but we need a giant public relations effort. The public does not care about checkbook journalism or doctors working for news media. It wants reliable information – the truth. And someone has to show the public the difference between noise and information. It will take decades, but it won’t happen unless we start now. Think big and be persistent.

Social media tools (especially Facebook and Twitter) have found a niche in the practice of journalism.

But is this an example of technology moving faster than careful thought?

There are pitfalls in sending out a knee-jerk tweet or stepping into someone else’s Facebook network to cultivate sources on deadline.

Here are new guidelines issued by the Radio Television Digital News Association.

I’ve been asked a few times whether SPJ has updated its code of ethics to keep up with social media.

I’m not sure we need to. The ethical principles in the code, for the most part, don’t pertain only to one form of communication. Fairness, accuracy, context and other fundamentals certainly can apply to BlackBerry or cell-phone texters, too.

But my position isn’t immutable, and the rest of SPJ’s Ethics Committee has a wide range of views, which might lead to some degree of change. The committee will talk about this soon as part of a broad review of the code of ethics, which hasn’t changed in 14 years.

(I’m not sure about this reference in The Washington Times, which seems to suggest SPJ recently updated the code to address social media.)

Does the SPJ Code of Ethics need new language to guide journalists on the ethical use of social media as part of their work? Please tell us what you think.

-Andy Schotz, chairman, SPJ Ethics Committee