It’s Alive: Code’s Supporting Documents Linked
After a year of work by the Society’s Ethics Committee, I’m happy to announce that each principle in the Society’s Code of Ethics offers additional resources to guide journalists in making responsible decisions.
The new resources are not part of the Code or formally endorsed by the Society. Instead, they are meant to show journalists and other people interested in the profession’s practices potential avenues of action.
For example, a journalist considering granting a person anonymity can consult the “Seek Truth and Report It” tenet of the Code. There, they will find the principle warning journalists against granting anonymity. If they click on the principle in the online version of the Code, they will find additional explanations and suggested actions from the Society, Reuters and NPR.
The supporting documents behind the Code’s principles are never meant to be complete. Instead, each page accompanying the principles will change as resources are found or become obsolete.
For those with unanswered ethical questions after consulting the Code and its supporting documents, please contact the Society’s Ethics Hotline.
Andrew Seaman is the chairman of the Society’s ethics committee.