Fairness and offence
Rigorous journalism often offends, yet global broadcasters must cover all human experience to mirror world affairs accurately. While editorial purpose justifies sensitive content, clear warnings are essential to protect the public. Fairness demands an impartial, accurate exploration of all perspectives without using individuals to sensationalise a story. Above all, journalists must scrutinise their own motives to ensure personal bias never dictates their reporting or choice of sources.
Fairness in journalism
Fairness in journalism means exploring all sides of an issue and reporting the findings accurately.
Offence and journalism
Rigorous journalism inevitably offends some audiences. Global broadcasters must cover all aspects of human experience to reflect world affairs accurately.
Respecting privacy as a journalist
Journalists must balance privacy rights with the need for rigorous, robust investigation into matters of public interest.
Attribution and plagiarism
Producing a piece of original journalism involves uncovering facts that, had it not been for you, would have remained hidden.
Journalistic ethics – scenario
In this scenario a reporter feels ethically compromised after accepting hospitality from a developer who subsequently pressured them for favourable coverage.
Covering a tragedy – scenario
In this scenario we look at how a journalist should act when they witness a tragedy unfolding and have to decide whether to help, or to stand by and report.
Emotional assumptions – scenario
In this scenario a journalist lets their own emotional assumptions colour their news judgement resulting in misinformation.
Emotional pressure – scenario
How should a reporter respond when someone uses emotional pressure and threats to try to stop them doing their job?
Informed consent – scenario
In this scenario a reporter covering a disaster films a grief-stricken woman before discovering the facts about the ordeal she has witnessed.
Privacy protection – scenario
You are working on the online news desk of a large media organisation. News breaks of fighting overseas. Raw footage arrives showing identifiable dead bodies. What do you do?
Trespass and journalism – scenario
In this scenario we look at a situation where a journalist is faced with breaking the law in order to gather essential information for informing the public debate.
Related learning resources
Respecting privacy in news
Journalists must balance privacy with robust public interest reporting. This might require necessary and justified interference to ensure thorough coverage.
Attribution in journalism
Master news attribution and referencing by following our checklist for ensuring your reporting is accurate, credible, and avoids plagiarism.
Exercise: Referencing, attribution, and plagiarism
Original journalism often begins by finding a unique, unexplored angle within existing public information or the reporting of others. This exercise looks at what a journalist should do in those situations.
Workshop: Privacy in journalism
Modern journalism must balance public interest and privacy in a 24/7 digital news cycle. Learn how ethical reporters decide what to publish.
Workshop: Attribution and plagiarism
It's essential that journalists covering news attribute any material that they have gathered from other sources. A journalist must never copy the work of others and pass it off as their own.
Lesson: Fairness in journalism
Fairness in journalism is the concept of reporting news without bias or prejudice.
Lesson: Offence and journalism
This lesson plan is designed to help students avoid causing unnecessary offence while continuing to produce robust, critical, in-depth journalism.
Lesson : Respecting privacy as a journalist
This lesson plan is designed to help journalists learn how to respect privacy while also being thorough as they investigate issues that are in the public interest.
Lesson: The importance of editorial ethics
This lesson plan is designed to help journalists understand the importance of applying editorial ethics to their newsgathering and news production.
Module: Editorial ethics for journalists
This module provides an outline for teaching journalism students the importance of editorial ethics.