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7.6: Ethics Handbooks

  • Page ID
    294881
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    The South African Press Code provides ethical guidelines to journalists in South Africa. There are further many ethics handbooks to give you an idea of different ethics codes around the world. Journalists can regulate themselves to make good ethical decisions by consulting these handbooks.

    The principles of self-regulation have been written down in the ethical codes of journalism. An ethical code is a set of guidelines that is often more precise than the law. It defines readers’, journalists’ and interviewees’ rights. It also defines the basic principles guiding journalistic work, such as truthfulness and objectivity. Ethical codes are country-specific because of differences in cultures and legislation.

    The resources on the next page are from many countries, but they share many similarities. Reading a few of these will give you a good overview of ethical principles that are valid all around the world. For South African journalists, the South African Press Code should be their starting point and permanent guide.

    Ethical guidelines and resources:

    Summary

    Journalists sometimes don’t realise how much power they have and how their decisions can affect other people. Therefore, it is very important to make decisions about your stories in an ethical way, to still tell the story in a way that does the least harm. This chapter showed you how to make ethical decisions as a journalist. Journalists also need to know about the world, they need to be information literate. The next chapter discusses information literacy and shows how you can evaluate information so that you do not spread false information yourself.


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