The shades of grey of journalism ethics: Public Editor

In the days before a badly written book about a guy named Grey became a global bestseller, I would often refer to the “shades of grey” in journalistic ethics.

While one can’t go there these days without evoking smirks about the sexually explicit 50 Shades of Grey, the fact remains that many aspects of journalistic ethics are not a black and white matter.

And certainly the most intriguing and challenging ethical dilemmas of journalism often involve those many shades of grey.

My job, indeed that of all journalists, would be so much easier if journalistic standards and ethics were always a clear-cut matter of “Thou shalt do this, Thou shalt not do that.”

It is rarely that simple.

The reality of the complexity of journalism ethics in our ever-evolving digital era is the guiding principle of an important new ethics initiative presented last week at the annual Online News Association conference held in Los Angeles and attended by more than 2,000 journalists from across North America.

The “Build Your Own Ethics Code” project, led by veteran journalist Thomas Kent, standards editor of The Associated Press, involved more than 20 journalists working together for more than two years and soliciting input from many more journalists throughout North America.

The initiative is rooted in the premise that beyond a few fundamental and unassailable principles, journalistic ethics cannot be cast in stone and that policy and practice can — and does — vary across news organizations and among individual journalists.

That doesn’t mean anything goes. Or, that journalists should just make their own rules as they go along. After establishing four fixed points of journalistic values, the “BYO” ethics project provides a digital tool that guides journalists to customize their own codes of conduct based on a range of “building blocks” to consider in ethical decision-making.

First, the important fixed points of journalistic ethics. These are non-negotiable – indeed “black and white” fundamentals of all journalism, the core of every one of the dozens and dozens of journalistic standards code I have looked at in recent years.

These are:

Beyond those basics, the project encourages thought and discussion to determine where we stand as news organizations and as individual journalists on more than 40 specific issues including confidential sources, covering children and how we handle information gathered on social media.

“We started with the recognition that the journalism profession encompasses ever more people, philosophies and technologies,” Kent says. “There are many definitions these days of a ‘journalist,’ making it more important than ever for journalists to be clear about who they are and what they stand for.

“We believe the best hope for convincing all journalists to adopt and live by an ethics code is to give them ownership and flexibility in creating one.”

Steve Buttry, a Louisiana State University journalism professor and a well-travelled newsroom journalism trainer who was involved in the project from the outset, says the BYO code recognizes that journalists are rarely unanimous in our views on ethics policies and practice. He sees great value in the debate and discussion this new tool enables.

“As I’ve said many times, good ethical decisions don’t come from good rules but from many good conversations about ethics,” Buttry wrote in a recent blog post about the online ethics project.

While this initiative is geared to journalists, I think it is instructive for our audiences as well. It is well worth checking out to learn more about the many shades of grey of journalism ethics.

You can find it at: http://ethics.journalists.org/