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Based on the findings of this survey, it is evident that journalists’ perceptions of what is ethical, or not, largely aligned with the types of journalistic practices that they considered to be justified.
Based on the findings of this survey, it is evident that journalists’ perceptions of what is ethical, or not, largely aligned with the types of journalistic practices that they considered to be justified.
Almost 80% (79,5%) of respondents “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that professional standards (regardless of situation and personal judgment) should always determine what is ethical for journalists. In the South African context, “professional” standards are determined by the Code of Ethics and Conduct for South African Print and Online Media, the Code of Conduct of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa, as well as the in-house ethical codes of media houses.
In a similar vein, almost two-thirds of respondents (63,2%) agreed that professional standards should determine ethical actions – unless “extraordinary circumstances” require disregarding these standards. Conversely, only 8,5% of respondents agreed that what is ethical for journalists should be a matter of “personal judgment”.
When it comes to ethical practices, journalists were asked what actions they consider to be “always justified”, “justified on occasion” or “not approved of under any circumstances”.
When it comes to ethical practices, journalists were asked what actions they consider to be “always justified”, “justified on occasion” or “not approved of under any circumstances”.
It is clear from the findings that any exchange of money for news reporting is never justifiable for almost all (99,3%) of the respondents. Furthermore, journalists in this sample do not tolerate publishing or broadcasting stories with information that is not yet verified (87,5%), producing content that mimics news stories but hides its promotional nature (86,4%), or paying people for confidential information (81,3%).
Another practice an overwhelming majority of respondents (87,5%) believe should not be approved of under “any circumstances”, is to publish or broadcast stories with information that has not been verified yet. This finding corroborates respondents’ view that counteracting disinformation is one of the most important roles for a journalist to fulfil.
One area where respondents appear more polarized, is whether it is justified to use the personal materials of “ordinary people” without permission. Just over half of respondents (53,0%) indicate that it should not be approved of under any circumstances, and 46.7% of respondents believe that it should be justified “on occasion”. The descriptive bivariate analysis of these views did not yield any noteworthy differences by gender, age, or ownership structure (private vs public) of the medic outlet where journalists work. One could argue that these views could arguably then be dependent on journalists’ individual (or personal) views. More research is warranted on these divergent views.
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