The Culture of Ethical Journalism in the Time of Social Media

wendimagegn — May 27, 2022   

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States is often quoted as saying that “The only wise policy to discover the truth was to put the market place of ideas and information unregulated by the government. Were it left to me to decide whether one should have a government without newspaper or newspaper without a government, I wouldn’t hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Jefferson’s opinions on the nature of truth, freedom and the free movement of ideas has guided many a pundit for more than 200 years and are still the guiding lights of what is known as ethical journalism. When it comes to social media practice today, it seems that many practitioners might prefer a government with unethical media over unethical media without government. Opinions are shifting constantly and preferences are rearranged in accordance with changing times.

Social media have become so powerful that it is dictating in a way the terms of the new deal. Governments in the West are often bowing before the gods of social media while societies endure the consequences. Traditional journalism as we knew it before the revolution in media technology is nowadays unrecognizably skewed and the borderline between what is ethical and unethical in journalism is constantly blurred if not ignored.

Global economic, political and social developments have recently become difficult for journalists in many countries to exercise or observe ethical standards in their news reporting, news analysis and comments on many issues. The growth in electronics technology that led to the rise and growth of social media have made ethical standards unattainable in their day to day activities. In the now bygone decades of conventional journalism, ethics assumed a primordial importance and the yardstick to distinguish well versus bad journalism was tantamount to the presence or absence of ethical standards.

The growth in recent years of media technology, the birth and growth of the internet and the development of social media, interconnected and interdependent as they are, are increasingly undermining ethical journalism to such an extent that any claim to authority on the matter seem ridiculous if not immaterial. Almost everybody in any part of the world has become informal journalists and the notion of “citizen journalism” seems to have captured the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people.

Millions are taking part in media activities every day that may be good as far as the growth of democracy and the unfettered expression of opinions are concerned even when they transgress the basic assumptions of ethical journalism and the standards of objective reporting. However in the final analysis rights, without duties become destructive when they are measured against the yardsticks of ethical journalism, often leading to catastrophic consequences.

The absence of any kind of legal or institutional enforcement of professional ethics against transgressors of the traditional rules of ethical journalism seems to have encouraged tens of millions of social media actors to enjoy their technology-acquired “press freedom” without the reciprocal observance of ethical rules that had made this once great profession, dubbed the Fourth Estate, one of the most distinguished and honorable activities in the world. Ethical journalism has nowadays nearly succumbed to mediocrity, arbitrariness or irrelevance. In the worst case, it has turned into a catalyst of horrible conflicts, political crises and government arrogance as tools or manifestations of new tools of oppression and domination.

This has in turn given greater leverage to big media companies to blur the dividing line between ethical journalism and fake news. It has given unwelcome actors in access to unprecedented power to disseminate all kinds of nonsense in the name of journalism. It has promoted the creation create of a new symbiosis between power structures and media corporations as far as determining the contents of social media, in setting the agendas and in shaping the consciousness of the unsuspecting audience. How the global power centers and their media brethren conspire and converge in promoting their agendas in not rocket science. How they manipulate the minds of tens of millions of citizens of the world is a daily event while dominating the world through soft power is their strategic objective.

Africa is particularly the target and victim of big media and big power convergence and the social media offensive in spreading fake’s news, destabilizing governments and confusing the innocent populations in the peripheral areas in particular. Fake news has consequently become not only the weapon of terrorists of all hues but also that of presumably responsible and respectable world powers. Even before the advent of social media both African governments and media practitioners paid little attention to the observance of ethical standards in conventional journalism. The culture of democratic dispensation was inexistent or severely curtailed. Ethical journalism was a buzzword that has no significance in practice as it enjoyed a small army of believers or followers.

Back in 1983, when social media was still unknown, journalists in many African countries could not grasp the importance of observing ethical standards in their professional practices. Many of them could not distinguish between politics and journalism and saw both as interchangeable while in reality they are distinguishable and often unfriendly to one another. Many journalists in Africa often played the role of political opposition while parading as journalists simply because they could not grasp the difference between the two.

The press in Africa, if properly practiced could be the voice of the people but it could in any way replace the people and act on their behalf by playing the role of political opposition that is attributed to politicians whether in opposition or in power. Legitimate criticism of governments is warranted but unjustified abuses against governments however illegitimate or authoritarian they might be is prohibited by the very ethics of the profession that required newspaper to be impartial, balanced, plausible, and fearless.

The private press in Ethiopia was born in the decade of the 1980s,that is to say in 1984 if we take the issuance of the infamous Press Law as its starting point. This led to the division of journalists in Ethiopia between those belonging to the state-owned and the independent press. The old Ethiopian journalists Association (EJA) was under the control of the government while the new Ethiopian Free press Association (EFPA) was formed by independent journalists who were working in the newly emerging free press. There was rivalry between the two organizations not around the issues of professional standards or ethical considerations but around the fact that the first was under the government while the latter opposed the government. This had in turn greatly harmed the emergence of ethical journalism that was the foundation of any true journalism because journalists both in the government and private press were alien to the ethical standards of true journalism and lacked the courage to look inwards to them and make the necessary corrections. As a consequence of this, the culture of relative tolerance that was beginning to barely take root right after the Press Law was issued started to decline progressively and in the end, it led to the near-total disappearance of any hope of press freedom. Attempts to reshape the Press Law led to repeated deadlocks simply because most journalists acted as political defenders of this or that political party and not as genuine public watchdogs as ethical journalism required.

It would be relevant here to outline some of the standards of ethical journalism based on the experiences of foreign countries. What are the standard ethical principles for journalists? There are several key ethical standards that are practiced or ignored by countless media practitioners across global news organizations. At the highest level, the standards call on journalists to seek the truth, act in the public interest, and minimize harm. The Watergate Scandals in the United States back in the 1970s is one of the best examples of how journalists should conduct their inv investigations to unearth the truth of a historic event.

That was also a critical moment in American history when the fate of many politicians hangs in the balance and the public needed to know the truth about the scandal and its implications.

“The Pentagon Papers, a major investigative story in The New York Times and The Washington Post, is a great example of the need for journalism ethics. Journalists faced a true dilemma. “On one hand, journalists had a duty to reveal the truth, as it was in the public interest. On the other hand, they also had a duty to protect the people named in the classified documents. Such papers can contain the names of secret operatives or reveal military plans—information that can cost lives and arguably weaken the nation if made public.”

In the end, they decided Americans’ “need to know about the government’s deceit outweighed the risks of revealing certain information. The U.S. government tried to suppress further publication of the documents, but the Supreme Court ruled that the newspapers had a right to make their own decision under the First Amendment.”

There had never been anything similar in American journalism since the Watergate scandals that has become a standard lesson in ethics for any journalists anywhere in the world to appreciate and imitate. According to Wikipedia, “Journalistic ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and good practice applicable to journalists. This subset of media ethics is known as journalism’s professional “code of ethics” and the “canons of journalism”. The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements by professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations.”

To go back to the situation in Ethiopia back in the 1980s, the absence of journalistic ethics was the main reason behind the absence of professional unity among the journalists and the tendency to play politics by many journalists and wearing many hats in order to camouflage their transgressions or lack of professionalism. The lack of cohesion among journalists had in turn undermined their potential to come together in defense of public interests or protect journalists from legal abuses.

One of the guiding principles of ethical journalism is to seek truth and report it Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. They also need to keep their emotions or their likes and dislikes in check whenever they exercise their profession. If not they should return their press cards to the relevant authorities and join a political party to promote their cause. It is utterly unethical to wear two hats and wear them interchangeably. One is either a politician or a journalist. Ignorance or conscious neglect of this simple rule has cost Ethiopian journalism a great deal.

All said and done, the absence of ethical journalism in Ethiopia was largely a lack of knowledge about what true journalism is and how it should function in order to play its role as public watchdog. There may be real passion in the hearts and minds of many young journalists who were doing their job with zeal and commitment. Unfortunately, there was also a real lack of knowledge about the core principles of ethical journalism that look simple but are difficult to exercise. There was also lack of knowledge and insight on the part of the media authorities on how journalists should be helped to attain ethical standards in their practices and turn from hostility to cooperation in their relation with the media authorities. The main emphasis should be on educating journalists instead of hastening to punish them for any real or alleged transgression. There should be a clear guideless for journalists to observe and enforcement of the rule of law in order to mitigate any form of arbitrariness. Press organizations need to be institutionalized and professionalized in the sense that they should be responsible for the professional conducts of their members. These are simple steps that need to be taken in order to free the Ethiopian press from lack of direction and lack of professionalism. The media authorities and all the relevant actors need to work in unison in order to free the press from its decades-old existence in the dark labyrinths of ignorance.

However, in order to achieve this objective, journalists need to put professional ethics above their personal preferences and/or political inclinations particularly at this time of social media confusion or chaos. All professions may allow their practitioners to engage in politics. Journalism may be the only profession in the world that is prohibiting its practitioners such a luxury and that is for the ultimate good of societies, governments and nations.

BY MULUGETA GUDETA

THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 27 MAY 2022