Most of us who follow current events will watch news networks, pay for papers, and look to media personalities in search of credible, trustworthy information. But why does fair coverage matter, exactly? How do we even determine what is “accurate,” “transparent,” or just deserving enough of our attention to cite as good, legitimate “storytelling?”
These questions seem to have self-evident answers, but it can actually be hard to put them into words. In this article, we’ll discuss not only why ethics matters in journalism and academic writing, but also how ethical writing requires evocative storytelling to reach audiences most effectively.
What is ethics? That’s another seemingly easy question that, when asked, probably prompts synonyms – “morality,” “principles” – rather than a coherent definition.
Regarding journalism, “ethics” encompasses a system of values by which writers seek to practice moral, principled conduct. Almost every major news outlet has, and often makes public, its own journalism code of ethics. In providing ethical codes, these outlets set standards that individual journalists must follow – with potential disciplinary action if violated – and which, in theory, signify their commitment to honest, unbiased reporting of the truth.
In other words, ethics in journalism is crucial to protecting the reputations of journalists and their organizations.
Most of the time, the ethics of journalism are not gatekept or accessed only through exclusive knowledge. As the New York Times suggests, writers need only want to write with integrity; from there, “[i]n many instances, merely applying that purpose with common sense will point to the ethical course.”
But at the risk of sounding repetitive, “common sense” might seem easy to have yet can be hard to make tangible. Since we’ve established that ethics is key to quality output, let’s discuss six specific ethical principles to which writers should adhere in journalism and other forms of academic writing.
If you knew someone was a pathological liar, would you trust them to accurately report current events? If you saw a news anchor get caught in a lie, would you tune in the next day and think, “This guy never steers me wrong”?
Credibility is everything in journalism, and journalists can only earn it through genuine work. Outlets like the Associated Press emphasize how they “abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions” because, if they become partial to any of those things, their audiences will not trust them. Any journalist pursuing an ethical career must therefore place honesty above all else.
If you saw a newspaper downplay a politician’s corruption scandal, only to find out that the politician was its largest donor, would you really be able to say they were covering the scandal fairly?
Journalists often demonstrate their honesty by stressing that they are independent in their judgment. When investigations concern powerful actors, it’s important that writers remain free of conflicts of interest brought about by donations or revenue streams from the subjects of their coverage. In preserving their independence, these writers avoid biased reporting and uphold their commitment to standards of journalism like fairness, accountability, and aversion to influence.
If you discovered that a TV network refused to list its financial backers, could you really say that they had nothing to hide?
Like honesty and independence, it’s also important that journalists maintain with their readers maximal transparency about their methods. Sometimes transparent reporting is about revenue – again, publishing one’s donors is a good way to demonstrate independent judgment – but it can also concern practices like sourcing. For example, the Intercept insists upon transparency in citing sources except in cases of protecting vulnerable individuals; such a distinction is, itself, an example of maintaining transparent guidelines on fact-checking and personal safety.
If you watched a news segment that only promoted one perspective on an issue, and either ignored or misrepresented the other, could you really credit the segment with leaving you as well informed as possible?
While journalists may have personal opinions, it is still good ethics to represent fairly those opinions with which they disagree. That’s not to say “fairness” denotes a complete absence of editorialism; facts and lies are not equally valid, after all. However, even when outlets are critical of people, they will still practice fairness by allowing their subjects to refute allegations, defend themselves in good faith.
Would you keep reading articles from a website that, upon getting important facts wrong, refused to acknowledge its mistakes?
Journalism is hard business, and occasionally reporting factual errors does not necessarily make a source untrustworthy. That said, one of the most important principles of journalism is an outlet’s ability to correct the record. Journalists that retract misleading details upon discovery, or even prompt apologies for falsehoods, ultimately demonstrate more honesty by practicing accountability for their actions. In its code of ethics, Reuters does not claim that it never makes errors; instead, it resolves to “rectify them promptly, clearly and comprehensively.”
Would you support a journalist who inserts jokes about the victims of a hurricane, or who publicizes personal details without respecting others’ privacy?
While accuracy matters in journalism, it’s just as crucial to remember that journalists cover real people, often in difficult if not desperate situations. The Associated Press, for example, does not identify victims of abuse nor minors unless, perhaps, they make themselves publicly known. Maintaining humanity ensures that journalists remain ethical not just towards their audiences but their own sources. In other words, respecting facts should always go hand in hand with respecting the subjects of those facts.
Having elaborated upon six examples of journalistic principles, let’s learn from one of Britain’s premier experts on journalism and its relationship to society, media production, and artificial intelligence.
In addition to being Professor of Practice within the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Charlie Beckett is also an accomplished author and founding director of Polis, a think tank dedicated to research and debate on international news. While looking at Professor Beckett’s work, let’s ask ourselves what journalism actually looks like when produced within our complex modern landscape of technology, politics, and emotions.
Apart from teaching, news production, and think-tank research, Professor Beckett’s storied résumé also includes several books about journalism in the modern era. His 2008 investigation, SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World, explores how traditional journalism must adapt to twenty-first-century innovations, like social media and online news platforms, if it is to remain a vital part of liberal society. More recently, Wikileaks: News in the Networked Era analyzes how one organization, Wikileaks, raises questions about free speech, national security, and political whistleblowers.
Ultimately, Beckett’s work demonstrates that the ethics of journalism, when practically applied, can prompt both controversy and nuanced conversation.
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT are disrupting fields that traditionally rely on written communication.
That’s why Professor Beckett’s Polis media think tank has dedicated forums, research, and global surveys to generative AI’s impact on the news media landscape. Recognizing that AI can undermine ethical journalism – proliferating misinformation, amplifying extreme speech, stifling transparency – Polis seeks to understand through detailed reports how news organizations should navigate the unique challenges created by this new technology. Even setting aside job displacement, most newsroom respondents express deep concern about AI’s negative impact on editorial quality and the journalism industry at large.
Having shown Charlie Beckett’s efforts to navigate our modern journalistic landscape, let’s elaborate on those different types of media in which journalists can work today.
While we’ve been discussing the ethics of journalism, let’s remember, when reviewing these different platforms, that good storytelling is just as important when it comes to journalistic and academic writing. Staying committed to the facts is one thing, but academic papers most effectively deliver those facts amid compelling language, evocative prose, and organized ideas. Often journalism and academic writing are at their best when they blend ethical standards with powerful linguistic tools found in literature.
What is print media? Think newspapers, magazines, books, or any other forms of communicating information through physical, printed material. It encompasses the “classic” types of academic writing that informed readers consumed before the digital age, and it still has a vital role alongside modern technology.
Journalists write print media in offices or at home, though they rely upon printing presses to mass produce their publications. As standard-bearers of an old medium, print journalists must also engage audiences with time-tested means of entertainment. These include snappy headlines; storytelling talent; and, using the “inverted pyramid” model, a willingness to prioritize new, relevant details over background information.
Because they’re so ubiquitous today, it’s easy to forget that new forms of media broadcasting, like television and radio, only became widely available in the last century. Alongside traditional newsrooms, these technologies allowed journalists to present their work in studios, on TV sets, and in front of microphones and cameras to enormous audiences.
While promising unprecedented access to listeners, electronic broadcasting also required journalists to translate written communication skills into oral, visual skills like public speaking and confident body language. In this way, the expansion of journalism into new territory also, in terms of storytelling, made the job more complex.
While print and broadcasting journalism are still around, they now have to accommodate the gigantic leaps in instant, universal communication introduced by the Internet.
Online journalists not only have even more means of reaching listeners through websites, podcasts, and social media platforms, but they are also more democratically situated than ever before. Instead of requiring access to a printing press, radio station, or television network, journalists today can publish content from anywhere, with virtually no gatekeepers or guardrails in their way. However, this means, now more than ever, that journalists must remain committed to ethical principles that ensure the integrity of their profession.
We’ve explained that journalists, in order to effectively communicate their findings, rely upon strong ethics and good writing acumen. Regarding the latter, let’s now delineate how journalists use different styles to appeal to audiences and meet changing circumstances.
Importantly, much of what is considered effective journalistic practice also applies well in the world of academic writing. Like those in print, broadcasting, and Internet media, academics produce journals, essays, and research articles by adhering to strict formatting standards, following scientific processes, and combining critical analysis with persuasive rhetoric. While serving different purposes, journalism and academic writing thus occupy two sides of the same coin.
Writing a narrative argument essay is one of the most crucial assignments in journalism and any academic field. Like with storytelling, the quality of argumentative writing is determined not just by cold, hard facts, but the logical organization and reasoned analysis necessary to contextualize those facts effectively.
Narrative argument examples in journalism can include detailed investigations, but they’re also often found in the form of opinion pieces. These articles are biased by definition, but they remain ethical by remaining honest about the author’s intentions to persuade and promote a single perspective. The best “op-eds” will uphold journalistic standards of truth-seeking within the context of transparent argumentation.
Like narrative argumentation, writing an APA format persuasive essay requires journalists and academics to disclose biases, adhere to fact-checking standards, and support logical claims with clear-cut rhetoric. The difference is that an APA format argumentative essay also demands that the essayist follows formatting guidelines set by the American Psychological Association.
These guidelines, most commonly practiced in the social sciences, aim to standardize elements like fonts, page format, essay structure, and source citations. While presenting a learning curve for writers, APA standards also enable readers to focus on the substance of academic contributions by ensuring consistency and legibility across the board.
On that note, journalists and academics often arrive at their conclusions by using scientific processes to investigate questions thoroughly. In hard sciences, like chemistry, academic research papers not only follow aesthetic formatting standards, like APA, to the letter; they also structure the “research” itself according to formal steps like hypothesizing, predicting, and conducting data analysis.
While journalists may not order research papers with such rigidity, they often still use principles derived from the scientific method to organize their ideas. In this way, steps like writing questions, testing data, and drawing conclusions make journalism a focused, rigorous pursuit of the truth.
Sometimes we forget, when scanning endless political essay topics in the Washington Post, that old-fashioned newspaper articles are often the first, most detailed avenues of introducing current events into the historical record.
But while formatting standards may change from paper to paper, news articles utilize the same combination of ethics and rhetoric which, as we’ve established, are essential to engaging and establishing credibility with readers. With little space on the page, print journalists may prioritize concise observation over deep, nuanced analysis. However, reading their work alongside the other formats listed here makes for a balanced, well updated media diet in the end.
In this article, we’ve gone over the basics of journalistic ethics, practical applications of modern journalism, and how journalists employ different formats to share their ideas.
Oftentimes what makes for “good” journalism also makes for “good” academic research and literature paper writing. If anything, such a massive overlap only reiterates why journalism is so important. The skills it trains are highly transferable. Transferable skills unlock opportunities in literary fields. And, in the meantime, journalism constitutes a public service that breeds a well informed citizenry. And so, to quote Walter Cronkite, “Freedom of the press is not just important to a democracy; it is democracy.”
Use a proofing tool or service or a friend for proofing-when you finish, you are going to be too tired to even begin to think about proofing and then editing. And you may actually make new errors while editing. If you can use a proofing program, or can get a friend to come over and help you with this step, your eyes will really appreciate it. A new set of fresh eyes will be able to find the errors, which you may have made in this piece.
Build the best outline you can-do a few hours of work on the outline. By giving the outline extra time, you will find that you are able to compose the piece easier. So put major time and effort into this very important pre-writing step. You will be glad that you did so. If you are not sure how to put together an effective outline, search online and find more helpful hints. There are some very nice outline templates out there that are easy to use. This will speed up the process some.
-you need to eat a good meal filled with vitamins and nutrients. Make sure to build in snack times for healthy food choices to keep you powered up for this task.
By filling up y our body with the right foods, you can help to delay the crash of your body when you get super tired.
when you feel yourself getting sluggish, get up and then move around some. Take a walk outside or jump rope.
Do what it takes to re-supply your energy and reinvigorate your body for this experience.
or decide it quickly. now it not the time to spend days exploring a topic idea. Get on the Internet and explore the social media sites and news platforms
Look for a topic, which gets your attention. If it is trending, that is a very good sign that it should have some support.
When rushing your work, you will inevitably miss certain facts, or ignore grammar mistakes because you are too tired to notice them.
Therefore, try to get going with the assignment as soon as it is handed over to you.
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