ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

The importance of transparent ethical decisions on stories, pictures, television footage and staff issues is intensifying now journalists are under increasing scrutiny and media organisations feel preserving trust is a feature of their business models. This course is designed to embed a common decision-making approach throughout an organisation. After it, writers and broadcasters can expect to strengthen their confidence in identifying ethical decisions in stories they are working on and publishing, and know when and how to open discussions with editors and lawyers.

Journalism skills addressed during the course

1. •News judgment
   

2. •Legal dangers
   

3. •Codes of conduct
   

4. •Privacy
   

5. •Ethical decision-making.
   

Course Objectives 

After completing the course, participants can expect to be able to:

1. •Identify stories that carry an ethical question
   

2. •Make quick, balanced ethical decisions
   

3. •List the provisions of relevant codes of conduct
   

4. •Decide when to refer stories to senior editors and lawyers
   

5. •Publish stories with confidence
   

6. •Reply to criticism in an appropriate manner
   

7. •Adopt a logical approach to ethical decision making.
   

Course Outline

Course participants review past ethical dilemmas and discuss ethical decision-making in their organisations. They are expected to build a code of journalism conduct as a group and then compare with other relevant codes - and understand the codes’ limitations. Participants try to reach agreement on how to handle a number of ethical issues and, in facilitated discussions to extract learning points to build checklists to use after the course.

Terms explained during the course

Codes of conduct, ethical decision-making concepts.

Pre-course work

The course requires participants to bring past ethical dilemmas to a general discussion. Pre-course reading.