Professional code for journalists: sense or nonsense?

By Steven de Jong, chief editor Politiek-Actie.net - Because of factors like rivalry pressure and the high running speed of news, we tend to more and more forget about the journalistic norms and values. Important methods and values like hearing both sides of a story, objective reports and independent gathering of news are under pressure. When media copy each others reports too fast without taking the time to observe those values, media hypes with very harmful effects will develop. Harmful not only for those directly involved, but also for the journalist and the medium.

The media under fire
Henk Krol, chief editor of the Dutch Gay Krant, is very well-informed about this latter. In his hunt on pedophiles, he accused a senior official of the Dutch Department of Justice. In the weekly magazine Panorama, as well as on the radio and television, he avidly explains the accusations about sexual offences. However, the accusations don’t add up and now Krol is the one – not so avidly - wearing the penitential robe. Panorama couldn’t care less, the magazine loves balancing on the edge of journalistic decency: ‘anything for the ratings!’ (Panorama mainly consists of pictures).

A second example: after the defeat of the Dutch soccer team against Scotland, Henk Spaan, a dutch journalist, thinks he has a scoop. On the front-page of the Parool, the journalist proudly explains how the Dutch soccer players cheerfully hit the town after their failure in Glasgow. Completely untrue, so it seems. A humiliating rectification follows.

The Parool seems obstinate: on the 10th of January 2004, Heleen van Royen, a dutch journalist, tells tales and lets people know about then alderman Rob Oudkerks visits to prostitutes. Matters he has told her in private. Doing this, van Royen undermines the unwritten rule handled by political reporters: ‘there will be nothing reported about the private life of a politician, unless the man or woman brings it up in public him or herself or will get into trouble because of it.’ The matter only presents losers: most of van Royens colleagues don’t want anything to do with her anymore. Oudkerk, the alderman of Amsterdam, has to resign.

We could go on like this for a while, but these examples are clear enough: even if journalists handle moral codes of conduct during times of media hypes, then still there is very little we notice of that in practice.

History of journalistic codes of conduct
Nevertheless, history teaches us that fierce efforts to impose a code of conduct upon journalists had already been taken. The discussion about the quality of reporting already started back in 1894. For a while, there has even been an international court of justice for journalism in The Hague, Netherlands in 1931, but it disappeared when war started. After the second World War, the International Federation for Journalists picked up where the court of justice for journalists left of and drew up a professional code. The fundamentals in this code are: freedom, truth, honesty, confidentialness and integrity. In 1995, the Code of Conduct for Dutch Journalists (also named the Code of Society) developed, designed by the Commission of Legal Matters and Ethics on request of the board of the Dutch Society of Chief Editors.

Code of Society
The Code of Society deals with the journalistic sins, like accepting backhanders, willingly giving inaccurate information or expressing unfounded accusations, the relation between observation or sources and the journalist, including source protection, hearing both sides, working undercover and with hidden cameras, considering privacy, rectification and reply. ‘The Code of Society deals with everything against the background of the statement that news supply is a general importance which for the journalist requires enough material and mental space, as well as sufficient carefulness.’, so speaks Dick Verstegen, the chairman of the Commission of Legal Matters and Ethics.

Social Support
About ten magazines and the the Dutch press agency ANP are now officially using the code or comparable agreements, the latter often having been used already long before the introduction of the Code of Society. The sad truth though, is that hardly any journalist knows about the Code of Society, not to mention the ‘checklist’ they ‘have to’ handle while exercising their function. In a time where news organizations use commercial criteria as a guideline, ‘when the grade of entertainment increases, the investigative journalism decreases’, there seems to be little support and need for journalistic rules of conduct. At least this is the case with journalists as they love seeing lots of politicians and famous Dutch people.

Self regulation
The problem is that the codes have been set up for the individual journalists and not for organizations. It is not a code from the employer, so each and every individual journalist has to judge for himself. The definition is, other than amongst doctors and lawyers, difficult: who does the code concern to? Who is a journalist? Because it is a voluntary agreement, there can be no punishment but there is something called self regulation. The code is not binding, not compellable and is full of compromises. A professional code for journalism cuts right through newspapers, television shows, companies and organizations. An often heard of counter-argument is that journalists are no longer able to exercise their profession freely. Dutch newspapers like NRC and Telegraaf, as well as Dutch magazines like Elsevier and Story, distinguish themselves by the mutual difference in ethical ‘rules of the game’.

Compass
Dick Versteeg, chairman of the Commission of Legal Matters and Ethics, refutes these arguments: ‘A code does not derive her value to whether or not it is compellable or can compare the pros and cons of importance. In every situation, a journalist needs to be able to navigate on his compass of ability to independently judge. The code makes an excellent expedient because at the same time it also leaves sufficient space for the journalistic social contexts own necessary interpretation.’

Elusive profession
No matter how well-meant, Versteegs ideal is not tenable, applyable and definitely not manageable. For the elusive profession called journalism, the non-committal character of his code is still the thorny point. The ambition to bring about a cultural change is - to put it mildly – naïve and a discussion about it is doomed to end up in a yes-no conversation.

Lady Justice
When it comes to ‘norms and values’ everybody has his own ideas about it. So we will have to do with present jurisdiction, though it should be amplified to offer individual civilians more protection against media violence. Citizens, Dutch celebrities and politicians on their turn, should take legal steps sooner when they think they have been wronged by the media. This will present concrete jurisprudence, which can make journalists become more careful, more honest and – although compelled – more upright. The ambition of a society as an Utopia where journalists, just like politicians, have a responsibility towards the citizens, should be – no matter how sad this may be – wiped off the table. Journalistic-ethical questions are good for knocking some moral sense into journalists’ heads and keep the philosophers and ethici busy. The balance of Lady Justice has to administer justice.

Steven de Jong, chief editor Politiek-actie.net - Because of factors like rivalry pressure and the high running speed of news, we tend to more and more forget about the journalistic norms and values. Important methods and values like hearing both sides of a story, objective reports and independent gathering of news are under pressure. When media copy each others reports too fast without taking the time to observe those values, media hypes with very harmful effects will develop. Harmful not only for those directly involved, but also for the journalist and the medium.

"Because journalists take the easy road through college with a menu of ethnic and environmental studies and have only a glimpse of the classics or civics and history, they have no value with which to gauge their impressions. Subsequently they write what they feel and what their friends feel rather than what they see and derive from fact."

Well said.

I heard some dope reporter leading the subject of an interview on camera today to color the person's tone of his statements regarding the political situation in Iraq. You can't control these news vigilantes with any ethics code. You have to go around them like Reagan did.

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