Cracking newsroom ethics code

Finweek editor Colleen Naude says a code of ethics for all Media 24's business journalism units is handed to every new employee when they join. It requires journalists to declare all their share transactions.

Journalists owning shares in a company they write about have to declare that at the bottom of the story. News site Moneyweb forbids journalists from buying or selling shares within a two-week period of them being covered on any Moneyweb site.

A search for such a code within the memories of staff and the halls of BDFM, the publisher of Business Day and Financial Mail, however, yielded little. An undated, framed and dusty BDFM editorial code of ethics was eventually located behind the receptionist's desk in the Financial Mail office. The code says any journalist with an interest in a story should disclose that at the bottom of the article, but the practice is not followed.

Paddi Clay, head of training at BDFM half-owner Avusa, says rather than focusing on an explicit code, the company ethos was to impart ethical values throughout training.

“Ethics should be integrated. The way of teaching it for incoming people is to have ethical discussions whenever an issue arises,” she says.

Business Report editor Jabulani Sikhakhane says any efforts to locate a policy in his newsroom would also turn up little. “I would probably draw a blank!” he laughs. “There's nothing displayed prominently anywhere in the newsroom. We ought to have one, but it's not there. There is a group policy, the group will have something but it's not specific enough to financial journalism.”

But, he says, a focus on codes can be misguided. “The problem is that the things about codes sometimes pop up when there's a crisis. If there's a huge scandal relating to the work of a journalist, everyone says we need to put together a code of ethics but a couple of years later everyone forgets about it.”

Deon Rossouw, director of the Centre for Business and Professional Ethics at the University of Pretoria, makes a similar point. “If it's just words on paper it doesn't mean a thing. It should be embraced by journalists that it is something that they take pride in as part of their professional identity. It's something that says ‘there's no way we can achieve excellence unless we subscribe to certain virtues and standards'.”

Source: Business Day

Published courtesy of