An interesting topic was raised when my cousin
Topsy Krets and I were chatting one day. (He has a wicked blog, so check it out sometime :-) ) He asked me what my ethical codes were as a journalist.
I love being asked this question, because I feel that I have a very high ethical standard.
As journo students, we are forced to study ethics as a subject. I leant a lot about the "code" that we as journalists should follow. I must admit, I do see a lot of unethical articles being published in all form of media, i.e: radio, tv, online and print.
I have on many occasions come across a situation that needed an ethical choice to be made.
1. I never publish ANY embargo articles before the embargo date.
2. I never troll on other sites. There is nothing useful when trolling. I do on the other hand give criticisms and advice and sometimes a handy link or two. Also, when I give criticisms I always point out something good about the article before I point out the bad. A trait I learnt from the great Megan Rusi
3. NEVER EVER EVER use images from google images. Those images are NOT in the public domain. Sure use those images in your blog etc, but never in an article and also never claim them to be yours. A few articles of mine were stolen by some Namibian website claiming it was "free content" - what a load of bull kak... Stealing an article is the same as stealing a picture taken by someone else and claiming it is yours.
4. I never use Wikipedia for research... and trust me, I see a lot of people looking up information on Wikipedia... I do look on wikimedia commons for free images that are in the public domain. I can use those images without having to worry about copyright law. However I do contact the person who posted the image before I use their picture in an article/slideshow/thumbnail etc... I send them an email as it is a nice thing to do. And even though it is copyright free, I still credit the photographer. ALWAYS! ;-)
5. I prefer conducting my interviews over email, that way I can directly quote them without making a single mistake. Journalists have a unique way of manipulating a person's quote, so that it still sounds exactly like what they said, but make's a slightly ambiguous. Example: what he really said: "my wife Glenda and I love buying toys for orphans each Christmas . What a tabloid journo would say: Max said he and his wife to love orphans so much that they buy them Christmas toys to play with. If you don't get the ambiguity, try reading that with a dirty mind. Why with a dirty mind? Because we as journalists are trained to think with dirty minds to avoid such ambiguities in the first place, not to make them.
6. I will never sacrifice my journalistic integrity to gain more traffic. I've no intention of becoming a trender. By that I mean writing about things that would only be read by people because A) it's about celebs B) it's about sex and C) it's about Celebs having sex.
I have more to say on this topic, however, I am too busy trying to de-sex-ify a condom article... go figure...
Lovelace out...
