Ethics and Radio

Ethical implications are attached to every piece of journalism. These include:

• the stories that are chosen and equally those that are not;
• who is interviewed;
• the questions put to the interviewee;
• the editing of those interviews;
• what time of day the story is released;
• how many bulletins are used;
• the length of clips used and;
• how the cues and headlines are written and read.

The International Journalist Code's first clause states:

'Respect for the truth and for the right of the public to the truth is the first duty of the journalist.'

This also resonates in various other codes of conduct, namely:

• The International Federation of Journalism
• The BBC
• The National Union of Journalists
• Committee of Concerned Journalists
• The Radio & Television News Directors Association
• Arabic broadcaster Al-Jazeera

The truth is not always the easiest thing to find and is highly time consuming. Although, there are other  principles present;  accuracy, fairness, public accountability, impartiality and objectivity, truth can be said to underpin them all.

The BBC guidelines state that:
'We strive to be accurate and establish the truth of what has hapened. Accuracy is more important than speed and it is often more than a question of getting the facts right. All relevant facts and information should be weighed to get at the truth. Our output will be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in clear; precise language. We will be honest and open about what we don't know and avoid unfounded speculation.'


The former director of the BBC News, Richard Sambrook, writing in the British Journalism Review in 2004 said how:
'In journalism, 'mainly right' is like being half pregnant - it's an unsustainable position.'

Impartiality and diversity
BBC Editorial Guidelines state how:
'We strive to be fair and open minded and reflect all significant strands of opinion by exploring the range and conflict of views. We will be objective and even handed in our approach to be a subject. We will provide professional judgements where appropriate, but we will never promote a particular view on controversial matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy.'

Here is a transcript from a piece on Radio 4's 'From Our Own Correspondent' on the funeral of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat in 2004:

'The world watches the unfolding drama as the man who has become the symbol for Palestinian nationalism seems to hover between life and death...To be honest, the coverage of Yasser Arafat's illness and departure from Palestine was a real grind. I churned out one report after the other; without any sense of drama. Foreign journalists seemed much more excited about Mr Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah...Where were the people, I wondered, the mass demonstrations of solidarity, the frantic expressions of concern?...I started to cry...without warning. In quieter moments since I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion?'

This led to hundreds of complaints from listeners. The BBC Governor's Programme Complaints Committee rejected the idea that this was a 'tearful eulogy' and a 'flagrant violation' of Editorial Guidelines. Also, it was said that the report was balanced with Mr Arafat's 'obvious failings'. The governor's decided that  that the reference to crying did breach the guidelines on impartiality. The BBC's Director of News  apologised for what she described as an 'editorial misjudgement' and thus that the reporter 'unintentionally gave the impression of over-identifying with Yasser Arafat and his cause.'

Common diversity issues

• ethnicity
• disability, whether physical or mental
• faith and religion
• gender and sexual orientation
• age

Ethical dilemma scenarios

The comments after each of these come from Kevin Marsh, the former Editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme and now the Editor-in-Chief of the BBC's College of Journalism.

1. You are covering a dramatic accident and the only eyewitness is a homeless man who seems somewhat intoxicated. He provides compellling information that appears to corroborate the scene.
Do you use it?

No. Under no circumstances. A single witness corroborates nothing. A single drunk witness is potentially misleading. If you were honest - if a little blunt - about this man to the audience you would say in a script 'The only witness to the incident was this drunk tramp.' Would they conclude he was a powerful, key witness?

2. While gathering natural sound at a high school football match, your sports reporter captures the popular coach making derogatory sexual references while motivating his players. Do you run a story?

I wouldn't run the story just with that information. The tape has the status very similar to that of a recording made for note-taking purposes. That's to say, it was legitimate to make it and there is not a problem in discovering that there is a potential story in it. We would, however, have to begin the story from scratch, though with very intial evidence. We would make every effort to gather evidence  that he had made  inappropriate comments, spelling out what they were.  Where the story went next would depend on his reaction and any other corroboration we could gather. It's possible - though not without heavy - duty Editorial Policy intervention - that it gets to the point where we run the original tape, but it would have to be after considerable efforts on our part to get the story another way.

3. A major celebrity is intown campaigning hard for a parliamentary candidate and wants to give media interviews. Do you schedule one?

It depends. There is an intrinsic reason why not. You'd have to look at what else you're planning/have done in that consitiuency. Why is the celeb campaigning? Who else is campaigning? There are plenty of circumstances where this is fine, but a few where you'd risk unbalancing your coverage and you'd have to be sure you weren't doing that. At the very least this would mean usuallyequally lengthy and impactful interviews with the other candidates or cheerleaders for them not legally but out of fairness.

 

The challenges faced by a journalist (2)

Public Sphere

Journalism is important as it catapults discussion of information into the public sphere. This social role gives a journalist the role of reflection and practitioning news, treating it as a practiced art form, understanding that it goes beyond mere entertainment.

Brian McNair states how:

'Analysts and critics may dispute the extent to which Britain has a properly functioning 'public sphere'...but all agree that such a space should exist, and that the media are at its core.'

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries Jurgen Habermas stated how, 'the advent of a public sphere of reasoned discourses circulating in the political realm independent of both the Crown and Parliament (Allan 1997: 298).

Granville Williams argues that the concept that journalism serves an informed citizenry is undermined by the fact that that audiences are often treated as merely consumers. He believes there are constant battles between:

• Community v Globalism
• Value v Price
• Society v Market
• Regulation v Efficiency
• Need v Want
• Citizen v Community

Reflective Practitioner

Lynette Sheridan Burns (2002: 11) believes that journalists must become reflective practitioners, if they are to avoid losing the importance attached to social responsibilty:

'Professional integrity is not something you have when you are feeling a bit down at the end of a long week. It is a state of mindfulness that you bring to everything you write, no matter how humble the topic...Put simply, given the power that you have to do good or harm by virtue of the decisions you make, under pressure each day, the least you can do is think about it. It means an active commitment in journalists to scrutinise theor own actions, exposing the processes and underlying values in their work while they are doing it'.

Pat Aufderheide discusses the need to produce 'a more self - aware journalistic culture'. With regards to the US television after the 9/11 attacks, he argues  that journalists do need 'time, money and imagination to experiment with the kind of  reporting that gives viewers an understanding of large conflicts and issues in the world, before they become the stuff of catastrophe.'

The importance of maintaining curiosity

One of the main challenges in journalism is said to be the retention of curiosity.

Martin Wainwright of the Guardian states how, 'the best journalists go into a situation with an open and absorbing mind.' He continues: 'The great virtue of a journalist is curiosity - a constant interest in what makes people tick, why has this happened, what is going on?'

Jane Merrick, of the Press Association believed that modesty is an important quality to possess: 

'Never think that you know more than the lowest journalist on the newspaper or agency, or wherever you start. Take everything on board. There's a balance between giving your newsdesk  the confidence that you can do the job, and being level-headed. It's a matter of getting the balance right. Journalists will respect somebody prepared to take it all on board.'

Abul Taher feels that journalism is ' a daily ritual of moral and intellectual compromise - it is a good job, but it is hard'.

Paul Foot, a long standing reporter, investigator and columnist has some useful points for  aspiring young journalists in the 21st century:

I think people should join the NUJ and if there isn't a union where they work they should do their best to try and form one. That's the first thing. The other thing is, don't lose your sense of curiosity or your sense of scepticism. Understand the way the industry works and do your best to apply yourself against that. The last thing I mean is young people rushing in and telling their editors how to run the world, that's absolutely fatal. There's nothing worse than the arrogant young person - who knows everything - going and telling people what to do. Even if they're right, which often they are, that's not the way to behave. That's the way to get sacked. You've got to keep your head, you've got to bite your lip, and you've got to do what you're told a lot of the time. Nine times out of ten it's better to go ahead and do what you are told, but there's a tenth time when it is worth resisting. The main thing is to keep your sense of independent observation as to what's happening around you, and to try to use what ability you have to get those things into print. Whatever, you see, there's a story behind it. There is a truth and there's no doubt there are facts. Facts are facts. you cannot bend them.'

The one thing to remember then is once you have that initial foot in the door, do as your told by your editor!

Agency

Agency refers to the extent to which individual journalists can make a difference to the news. 

The political economy model has developed the idea that it is the determining role played by economic power and material factors in creating media products.

Peter Golding and Philip Elliott state how: 'News changes very little when the individuals that produce it are changed' - quoted in Curron and Seaton (1997: 277).

Stuart Hall beieves that the media have 'relative autonomy from ruling class power in the narrow sense,' but emphasises the 'relative', as he states his belief that journalism tends to reproduce societies prevailing ideology.

John O'neil believes that although agency may be limited by economic structures it does very much exist:

'Many, I suspect, find themselves forced to compromise the constitutive values of journalism,

while at the same time insisting that some of the standards be enforced...Journalists, like other workers, are not totally passive in their attitude to their own faculties.'

Harcup argues that talk on agency needs to take into account the tension of between journalists, of different identities between individual professionals, as socially responsible citizens, and as workers with a sense of a collective identity.

The challenges faced by a journalist (1)

Constraints

One of the many challenges facing journalists are the constraints that is placed upon them in terms of what they are able to publish.

Brian Whittle believes that 'the best reporter is someone who's naturally nosy.'

Common constraints also include time, style, advertisers, audience, subjectivity and sources that journalists face on a daily basis. With these in mind, David Randall came up with the suggestion that every newspaper should consider publishing this disclaimer:

'This paper, and the hundreds of thousands of words it contains, has been produced in about 15 hours by a group of fallible human beings, working out of cramped offices while trying to find out about what happened in the world from people who are sometimes reluctant to tell us and, at other times, positively obstructive. Its content has been determined by a series of subjective judgements made by reporters and executives, tempered by what they  know to be the editor's, owner's and reader's prejudices. Some stories appear here without essential context as this would make them less dramatic or coherent and some of the language employed has been deliberately chosen for its emotional impact, rather than its accuracy. Some features are printed solely to attract certain advertisers.'
What he really means is that do not believe all what you read in newspapers.
The London Evening Post in 1754, was quoted as saying 'Those who declaim against Liberties taken by Newspapers....know not what they say; it is this Liberty, that....protects all the rest.'
However, it has been argued that, although the journalists work alongside various constraints, some of these may be considered positive. For example, the Code of Conduct set out by the National Union of Journalists and the Code of practice by the Press Complaints Commission may be interpreted as protecting and helping journalists to resist what may be viewed as unethical behaviour and also defending journalistic integrity (Harcup 2002a and 2002b).
HG Wells delivered a message to his members of the NUJ in 1922 saying how:
'We affect opinion and public and private life profoundly, and we need to cherish any scrap of independence we possess and can secure. We are not mere hirelings ; our work is creative and repsponsible work. The activities of rich adventurers in buying, and directing the policy, groups of newspapers is a grave public danger. A free-spirited, well-paid, and well-organised profession of journalism is our only protection against the danger. (Quoted in Mansfield 1945: 518).

Ethical Responsibility

A further challenge for journalists is the importance of ethical responsibility. Jake Lynch, an international TV and print reporter believes that journalists must take this seriously as it is an imperative consideration of the job:

'In this information age, journalists are not disconnected observers but actual participants in the way communities and societies understand each other and the way parties wage conflict...We live in a media-savvy world. There's no way of knowing what journalists are seeing or hearing would have happened the same way - if at all - if no press was present. This means that policies are born with a media strategy built in. There's nothing pejorative in that, it's a condition of modern life; but it closes the circle of cause and effect between journalist and source. The only way anyone can possibly calculate journalists' likely response to what they do is from their experience of previous reporting. Every time facts get reported, it adds to the collective understanding of how similar facts will likely be reported in future. That understanding then informs people's behaviour. This is the feedback loop. It means every journalist bears some unknowable share of the responsibility for what happens next.'

Lindsay Eastwood has said how 'we should have been dodging bricks, but the adrenalin gets you.'

A journalist or an entertainer?

It was Rupert Murdoch who said that: 'We are in the entertainment business'. Some stories are entertaining due to their content, others because of the style in which they are written i.e. by the use of antidotes or the injection of humour. Considering news items are called 'stories' due to the adoption of many of the practices of story-tellers, this should come as no surprise.

This is not a new role thrust upon journalists as depicted in the 19th verse by Engel 1997:17:

Tickle the public, make em' grin,

The more you tickle the more you'll win,

Teach the public, you'll never get rich,
You'll live like a beggar and die in a ditch

Even if one of the aims, is to inform, nobody will listen, watch or read the stories if they are quite simply too dull. Therefore, tension, excitement and interest need to be created. Journalism is non-existent without an audience, and so the need to entertain becomes just as vital as the need to inform.

News outlets can receive controversy for doing this at, what the public believe are sensitive times. The ITN replayed images of the hijacked planes going into the world trade centre in time with music. The news item, broadcast the day after the September 11th attacks was deeply criticised by the Independent Television Commission as 'a tasteless offence to public feeling' (Akbar 2001).

Wells (2001) reports that insiders believe that BBC news has become 'more Madonna than Macedonia'. Former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell agrees with this belief: ' I can think of no time in my life when we needed to be better informed about the world beyond our shores, and no time when we have, in fact, been worse informed...The Palme d'Or for the dumbing down of British television goes to ITN, which was once a proud name in journalism...In hock to the advertisers, ITN set the trend by its decision, early in the 1990s, to promote an agenda of crime, celebrity and miracle cures - and to downgrade foreign news to a couple of slots a week on Tuesdays and Thursday, unless anything more sellable happened closer to home. The judgements were not editorial, but commercial.'

Channel 4 News anchor, Jon Snow has accused the ITV news of letting down democracy by eliminating serious news items in favour of more lifestyle and entertainment news (Arlidge and Cole 2001).
ITN chief executive, Stewart Purvis, believes this is nonsense and that they still are what they were at their beginning in the 1950s: 'the equivalent of a mid-market newspaper - authority with accessibility'. This is backed up to a point by research into changing trends in TV news in the last quarter of the 20th century. Barnett and Seymour found that, although there has been a decline in political coverage and a shift towards a tabloid-focused agenda, the overall picture remained 'a healthy balance of serious, light and international coverage.' Researchers have, however warned that increasing commercial pressures would threaten this balanced approach in the future.

Bob Franklin was quoted as saying: 'The history of the British press, since the emergence of popular journalism...has been a history of newspapers increasingly shifting editorial emphasis towards entertainment'.
This has not escaped the broadsheet newspapers. Take for example page eleven of the Times on Tuesday February 26th 2002. Under a 'news strapline, is a lengthy report on Kylie Minogue being voted 'best pop act' by readers of the New Musical Express, illustrated by a large photo of Kylie and her cleavage (triumphant kylie adds the brats to her brits). The two other stories on the same page concern a record by the winner of TV talent show Pop Idol and the memoirs of the late Kurt Cobain.

Matthew Arnold, 1887, believed that 'New journalism...has much to recommend it; it is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instincts; its one great fault is that it is feather-brained.'
In terms of entertainment values, a national survey of 25,000 adults found that, while just over a third said they relied on newspapers for information, one in five admitted they read a daily paper more for entertainment purposes (Powell 2001). The entertainment values of the public and so in turn adopted by the papers are humour, showbiz, sex, animals, crime and pictures. Holland believes that the concepts of news and entertainment are becoming more entwined: The relentless public push towards entertainment values has meant that the definition of what makes 'news' is itself constantly changing. The carefully established distinction between fact and opinion is now less easy to maintain. The need for accuracy has become dissolved into the excess of the headline, through a joke, an ironic exaggeration or an expression of outrage.
As Peter Hill, the Daily Star editor put it: 'readers are only really interested in people who are on television...And we like bottoms - because bottoms are fun.' Jeremy Gibson, the head of BBC features agrees with this: 'I would love to think that that type of documentary that didn't realise it had to entertain you as well as inform you is probably dead.' James Carey also believes that: 'Journalism can be destroyed by forces other than the totalitarian state; it can also be destroyed by the entertainment state'.

Nearly 70 years ago, FJ Mansfield recorded complaints about press sensationalism, distortion, invasion of privacy, and the reporting of sex 'beyond proper limits'. David Goodhart rejects the dumbing down idea of news items as simply elitism and romanticism: 'A combination of new media technology and social progress means, for good and ill, that common culture has gone forever. Welcome to what the critic Jason Cowley calls 'our crowded, fragmented, cultural market place'.

What the audience and journalist must remember is both the difference and presence of the informative and entertaining function concerning news items combined with the facts of a story, can be the most entertaining of all.