Category / Work / Ethics

The BBC, ITN, and Sky News have all handed unbroadcast footage of London's August riots to police after being served court orders, reports the Guardian.

British journalist Johann Hari has written a front-page personal apology — more than two months after he was suspended from The Independent on accusations of plagiarism and fabrication, plus personal attacks on other journalists. Surely, Hari meant it to be sincere. Many journalists, however, say it better fits the old cliché: too little, too late.

Journalists have the duty and privilege to seek and report the truth, encourage civic debate to build our communities, and serve the public interest. We vigorously defend freedom of expression and freedom of the press as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We return society's trust by practising our craft responsibly and…

This document – along with the accompanying “Principles for Ethical Journalism” – is intended to help both seasoned professionals and new journalists to hold themselves accountable for professional work. While many specific questions are considered here, it is impossible to capture all potential scenarios in a document such as this. Instead, it seeks to provide…

Back in 2010 the Central Basin Municipal Water District of California's hired PR company, the Coghlan Consulting Group, was faced with a problem. "All of us know that getting positive news coverage about the Agency is a very difficult challenge," wrote company head Ed Coghlan in a letter to the Water District, "With news staffs…

Quebec Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre's heart may have been in the right place when she endorsed the Payette report and all that it implies, writes Klaus Pohle in the Montreal Gazette, but there are still a number of reasons why she's wrong.

CBC Ombudsman Kirk LaPointe has released a new review in response to a complaint that a series of late June Sunday Edition segments on the police handling of the G20 protests were unbalanced and anti-police.

When Christie Blatchford came under fire for critiquing Jack Layton’s letter to Canadians on the day of his death, the question became: how much should taste, and sensitivities of timing, encumber opinion journalism? J-Source's Ivor Shapiro thinks there’s another question: what exactly is “journalistic” about the expression of opinions?

Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson take a look at how the European tabloids report on crime. This tell-all reporting style can ruin lives and reputations. Does journalism that's not done solely to sell papers ultimately win people’s support? 

Are bloggers journalists? Can insiders be outsiders? Ira Basen confronts some long-debated questions using the case of Mike Arrington, the Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur who started the blog TechCrunch. This article originally appeared on the Center for Journalism Ethics in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison site.