The Ethical Journalist. Gene Foreman

       News organizations should correct their mistakes promptly, prominently, and clearly.

       News organizations should have a system to invite, receive, and act on inquiries and complaints about news coverage.

       News organizations should be willing to explain and discuss how they cover the news.

       The audience can be a partner in reporting the news, but journalists have a duty to verify all user-generated content.

       There are limits to journalistic transparency, including the question of whether reporter’s personal opinions should be revealed.

       Using social media helps journalists report their stories and promote them. However, journalist’s comments about people and events in the news can damage their credibility and that of their news organizations.

       Social media policies are a common source of tension in newsrooms, and enforcement of those policies has led to staff protests.

       Covering society’s diversity is an ethical responsibility, because news organizations have a duty to cover the entire community.

       Careful, sensitive reporting is required to analyze the complex issues of racial and ethnic conflicts.

       Journalists face challenges in their efforts to provide knowledgeable coverage of cultures other than their own.

       Reporters who cover new immigrants are confronting ethics issues such as protecting the identity of sources who are not documented.

       Point of View: Gaining Respect by Showing Respect (Joann Byrd)

       Ethics issues arise in reporter’s efforts to cultivate sources while maintaining independence from those sources.

       If a journalist agrees to protect a source who provides information on condition of anonymity, honoring that agreement is a solemn ethical duty.

       Journalists must avoid placing their sources in any kind of jeopardy.

       Beat reporting requires reporters to balance their relationships with newsmakers whom they depend on for information but also may have to report on critically.

       Showing copy to sources and other situations in which ethics issues arise in source relationships.

       Journalists often must decide between the publics legitimate need to have certain information and the desire for privacy by the individuals involved.

       Although there are certain legal restraints on publicizing private information, most decisions are made on the basis of ethics rather than law.

       A three-step template, weighing the value of the information to the public against the degree of harm to the subject, can aid decision-making in privacy cases.

       Reporting situations in which privacy is central to decision-making.

       Journalists often have to decide whether to publish or broadcast content that could offend a significant element of the audience.

       Offensive content falls into three categories: perceived insensitivity, offensive words, and offensive images.

       A two-step process can help you make decisions, weighing the content’s news value against how offensive it is.

       Although the internet empowers the audience to be heard, news organizations are struggling to find ways to curb incivility, and some are discontinuing online comments.

       To decide whether to use a deceptive reporting practice, you first must acknowledge the deceit and not rationalize it.

       Before engaging in undercover reporting - pretending to be someone else you must meet exacting standards.

       There are other situations, short of undercover, in which journalists could deceive or could be perceived as deceiving.

       There is a consensus in the profession that a journalist should never deceive the audience or the journalists colleagues.