Forum discusses journalists’ occupational ethics in digital era
20/3/17
Occupational ethics of journalists in the digital era was the
topic of a forum held on the sidelines of the National Newspaper Festival 2017
in Hanoi on March 17th, drawing a large number of representatives from press
agencies, journalists and readers.
Participants agreed that journalists should be aware of the
importance of occupational ethics amidst the country’s deeper global
integration and a boom in social networks and smart-phone apps.
Tran Trong Dung, Editor-in-Chief of Ho Chi Minh City Police
Newspaper, highlighted the pioneer role of editors-in-chief of newspapers in
strictly following occupational ethics in press activities.
Editors-in-chief must have a firm political stuff and extensive professionalism,
thus leading their newspapers in line with the registered guidelines and
purposes, and protecting the country’s and people’s interests, Dung said.
In sensitive areas, editors-in-chief must have clear stances and
put the interests of the community higher than the interests of their
newspapers and the interests of their newspapers higher than the interests of
individuals and themselves, he stressed.
Meanwhile, Trinh Quoc Dung from the Vietnam Journalists’
Association held that the provision of information is now no longer a special
privilege of the traditional press, as the social media has enabled individuals
to directly provide information to the community in the fastest way.
Therefore, journalists joining the social media should show their professional
skills and role by sharing accurate, objective and responsible information, he
said, adding that this is also an important factor that makes journalists
different from the social media.
Minh Nam from the Journalist Magazine, said that in the fierce
race of information between the press and social networks, press agencies
should build up the trust of readers who still need high-quality articles
instead of sensational news.
Also on the fringe of the festival, the Vietnam Journalists’
Association’s Journalism Photograph Club hosted an exhibition to introduce 60
works capturing different aspects of the life across the country./.
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This special issue thus explores a range of phenomena at the junction between journalism and the social, computer, and information sciences.
Journalism ethics, as with the philosophy of ethics in general, is less concerned with pronouncements of the “rightness” or “wrongness” of certain acts, it relies on longstanding notions of the public-service mission of journalism.
Informing the public and serving a “watchdog” function regularly require journalists to negotiate questions of privacy, autonomy, community engagement, and the potentially damaging consequences of providing information that individuals and governments would rather withhold.
Potential harm posed by news accounts, the use of deceptive tactics to secure stories, and the increasing prevalence of infotainment content are all examples of journalism ethics issues.
Ethics serves to help us highlight morally relevant issues and come up with optimal defensible decisions.
While there are some clear rules and standards about how journalists should operate, more common are abstract statements of value that are intended to inform good behavior.
Journalism ethics is a distinct subfield of media ethics in that it addresses behavior and dilemmas unique to the practices of gathering and presenting news content.
True public service, they argue, requires journalists to report the news, as explosive, discomforting, or controversial as it may be, and let the chips fall where they may.
All of these imply a special covenant with the public and an obligation to act in ways that serve more than the commercial interests of individual journalists or news organizations.
Most journalistic ethics codes also call for minimizing harm in the course of news work.
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