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Be Ethical
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Nov09

Be Ethical

posted by Indrani Sen

Here’s a crash course in news reporting ethics, which you can hand out to your contributors: Don’t ever lie or misrepresent yourself, in posts or while reporting. Always identify yourself as a reporter to anyone you’re interviewing for a story, and explain where the story will be published. If you feel they don’t understand they’re being interviewed for publication, make every possible effort to explain this to them. Don’t take freebies, goods or services from anyone featured in a story. (One exception to this, depending on the policy of your news organization, is “press tickets” for events which you’re covering — but only if you’re actually covering the event that the ticket is for.) Don’t report on people that you know personally in straight news stories. In personal columns or opinion pieces, if you have a relationship of any kind (family, friend, enemy, lover, business associate) with a person mentioned or quoted, make sure that relationship is clearly disclosed in the piece. The difference between fact and heresay: If you’re presenting something as a fact, make sure you’ve seen it to be true with your own eyes or it’s widely accepted and documented as the truth (for example, Barack Obama is the president of the United States). Otherwise, check it out. (There’s a saying in journalism — “If your mom says she loves, you — check it out.”) And don’t forget to attribute any information that you can’t establish yourself — for example, “Police said the suspect robbed the store.” Just because something has been printed in another news source, doesn’t mean it’s true. When referencing information from another news source, be sure to cite and link to the news source. This is partly to give the other publication credit for the reporting, and...

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