Journalism Fundamentals
Telling the truth
Be honest, accurate, truthful and fair.
Do not distort or fabricate facts, imagery, sound or data.
Provide accurate context for all reporting.
Seek out diverse voices that can contribute important perspectives on the subject you’re writing.
Ensure that sources are reliable.
To the maximum extent possible, make clear to your audience who and what your sources are, what motivations your sources may have and any conditions people have set for giving you information.
When unsure of information, leave it out or make clear it has not been corroborated.
Correct errors quickly, completely and visibly. Make it easy for your audience to bring errors to your attention.
If a report includes criticism of people or organizations, give them the opportunity to respond.
Clearly distinguish fact from opinion in all content.
Conflicts of interest
Avoid any conflict of interest that undermines your ability to report fairly.
Disclose to your audience any unavoidable conflicts or other situational factors that may validly affect their judgment of your credibility.
Do not allow people to make you dishonestly skew your reporting.
Do not offer to skew your reporting under any circumstances.
Do not allow the interests of advertisers or others funding your work to affect the integrity of your journalism.
Community
Respect your audience and those you write about.
Consider how your work and its permanence may affect the subjects of your reporting, your community and since the Internet knows no boundaries the larger world.
Professional Conduct
Don’t plagiarize or violate copyrights.
Keep promises to sources, readers and the community.
If you belong to a news organization, give all staff expectations, support and tools to maintain ethical standards.
Confidential Sources
- We use confidential sources sparingly to provide important information that cannot be obtained through on-the-record sources. Reporters should disclose the identity of unnamed sources to at least one editor.
- We publish information from confidential sources that we consider reliable, but do not publish the opinions of unnamed sources.
- We are more open to granting confidentiality to sources we approach for interviews than to sources approaching us with tips or with dirt about political opponents or business rivals.
- We recognize that many sources cannot talk to us freely. We grant confidentiality if we think the source has a good reason. We will use information and quotes from unnamed sources we consider reliable.
Children: Coverage, Images and Interviews
- We avoid identifying — by name or photo — children who are connected with a crime as perpetrators, victims or witnesses.
- We refrain from featuring photos of children who are connected with a crime as perpetrators, victims or witnesses.
- Our journalists always obtain a parent’s permission before interviewing or photographing a child.
- Our journalists seek permission from a parent to interview or photograph a child when it relates to all but simple matters (e.g. asking about a favorite video game).
- We consider granting confidentiality if we’re covering a story about a sensitive issue that could cause a child to be stereotyped, judged unfairly or put in harm’s way, even if the child doesn’t request it.
Interviewing
- Our organization never pays for interviews.
- Our organization never provides interview subjects with lists of questions in advance.
Sources: Reliability and Attribution
- We use links, if available, for source attribution in online stories.
- We include source attribution in online stories themselves as well as links, if available, that provide additional information.
Quotations
- We will clean up random utterances such as pauses, “um” or “you know” unless they materially alter the meaning.
- We will allow separate phrases of a quote separated by ellipsis. (“I will go to war … but only if necessary,” the president said.)
Community Activities
- We will provide factual coverage in a neutral voice despite our organization’s involvement in the issues we cover. We will disclose our affiliation for transparency reasons, but the affiliation should not be evident from a promotional voice or content.
Plagiarism and Attribution
- We must always attribute all sources by name and, if the source is digital, by linking to the original source.
- When we are using someone else’s exact words, we should use quotation marks and attribution.
- We should always cite news releases if they are our sources, and should quote them if using their exact words.
Political Activities by Staff
- Our journalists should avoid political involvement such as running for or holding office, joining political parties, volunteering in campaigns, serving on community boards, donating to campaigns or displaying campaign materials on their property or persons.
- Our journalists should avoid coverage of an issue or campaign if a family member’s political involvement would call into question the integrity of a journalist’s coverage. If avoiding such a family conflict is impossible, we will disclose the family member’s involvement in related coverage.
- We encourage our journalists to be involved in the community, politics and the issues we cover, but we will disclose these involvements in our coverage.
Social Networks
- Our journalists are free to express opinions on social media.
- We encourage staff members to retweet, reblog, share and otherwise pass along things they find interesting on social media. We trust them to provide context where appropriate.
Awards and Contests
- We will assess the nature of the contest and make a decision consistent with our overall contest principles if we win a contest we did not enter.
Censorship
- We will refuse any attempt to censor our material, accepting delay as the price for putting out exactly what we want.
Corrections
- If a mistake is made in a social media post, we will delete the original post and publish a corrected version with an indication that the new post is a correction.
- We will show all changes that have been made to online stories if they involve corrections or rephrasing to fix unclear material.
- We will show all corrections in the place the incorrect material originally appeared (e.g., put corrections related to a story at the bottom of that same story).
Handling and protection of freelancers and “fixers”
- We will publicly credit the work of freelancers, fixers and translators.
Removing Archived Work
- We will never remove material from our archives.
Privacy
- We respect individuals’ right to privacy and do not use content we discover online from private individuals without receiving their permission.
- We do not believe that everything celebrities and public officials say and do should be made public, even though they cede a great deal of privacy when they enter the public eye. We analyze cases on an individual basis, taking into account the news value of the public figure’s action.
Sensational Material
- We will run sensitive material with stories with notes of warning.
Audio
- Audio cuts of newsmakers may be edited to remove insignificant stumbles.
Data Journalism
- We will apply our rules on paying for news to paying for data.
Accepting money
- Our funder(s) will not be able to see our stories before publication.
- Our funder(s) will have no say in topics to be covered or specific stories.
- Our funder(s) will not be used as sources in stories they fund.
- We will not publicly disclose funding sources.
Clickbait and Metrics
- We may aggressively court audiences who would be interested in our content, but we will not try to deceive people in headlines, social media posts or marketing.
News and Advertising
- We do not allow advertisers to have a say in the selection or content of stories and photos.
- We have specific, consistent definitions of terms like “Advertisement,” “Sponsored Content” and “Message from …” and disclose them to our readers.
- We require content provided by advertisers to have a different color type or background, a different font or a separation from editorial content with a heavy line.
- We will allow advertising anywhere on our publication or site.
- We disclose whether any one advertiser or industry provides a substantial share of our revenue.
Prepared using the Online News Association’s Build-Your-Own Ethics Code project.
Create your own at https://ethics.journalists.org
